ch a day! I near died of the heat. An' little Henry cut his lip
awful. The doctor had to put four stitches in it."

Sarah came over and stood mountainously by the table.

"What's the matter with them beans?" she challenged.

"Nothing, only..." Saxon caught her breath and avoided the threatened
outburst. "Only I'm not hungry. It's been so hot all day. It was
terrible in the laundry."

Recklessly she took a mouthful of the cold tea that had been steeped so
long that it was like acid in her mouth, and recklessly, under the eye
of her sister-in-law, she swallowed it and the rest of the cupful. She
wiped her mouth on her handkerchief and got up.

"I guess I'll go to bed."

"Wonder you ain't out to a dance," Sarah sniffed. "Funny, ain't it, you
come home so dead tired every night, an' yet any night in the week you
can get out an' dance unearthly hours."

Saxon started to speak, suppressed herself with tightened lips, then
lost control and blazed out. "Wasn't you ever young?"

Without waiting for reply, she turned to her bedroom, which opened
directly off the kitchen. It was a small room, eight by twelve, and the
earthquake had left its marks upon the plaster. A bed and chair of cheap
pine and a very ancient chest of drawers constituted the furniture.
Saxon had known this chest of drawers all her life. The vision of it
was woven into her earliest recollections. She knew it had crossed the
plains with her people in a prairie schooner. It was of solid mahogany.
One end was cracked and dented from the capsize of the wagon in Rock
Canyon. A bullet-hole, plugged, in the face of the top drawer, told of
the fight with the Indians at Little Meadow. Of these happenings her
mother had told her; also had she told that the chest had come with the
family originally from England in a day even earlier than the day on
which George Washington was born.

Above the chest of drawers, on the wall, hung a small looking-glass.
Thrust under the molding were photographs of young men and women, and of
picnic groups wherein the young men, with hats rakishly on the backs of
their heads, encircled the girls with their arms. Farther along on the
wall were a colored calendar and numerous colored advertisements and
sketches torn out of magazines. Most of these sketches were of horses.
From the gas-fixture hung a tangled bunch of well-scribbled dance
programs.

Saxon started to take off her hat, but suddenly sat down on the bed.
She sobbed softly,