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mine.”
    “The afflicted, Duke, they know.”
    “You bet they know.”
    “We could say one thing more.”
    “Yes, Mrs. Val, what?”
    “You being so gentlemanly.”
    That kind of shook me up, and for some little time we said nothing. When the time came for the wash-up, I worked through the shower curtains, a one-inch slit I pulled open, but to me she wasn’t sickening any more. I could see her, and the fat rolled and dappled and shook. But all I noticed was her slim, pretty shanks, and all I thought was what a shame they should tremble so, under that mountain of meat!

CHAPTER III
    M R. VAL WAS A TALL , thin man around forty, with gray hair, sallow skin, and a pious stoop, who got on my nerves, I didn’t exactly know why. Part of it, maybe, was how he rubbed his hands and jerked his head as he talked, reminding me of a waiter. And part of it, I’m sure, was his everlasting ant-pantedness, which had even annoyed the girls in the Marlboro courthouse. He cut in on everybody, hustled things up, listened to nothing at all. I owed him my freedom, it was only sense I should like him, and I tried to, don’t get the idea I didn’t. And yet, in the half-hour it had taken for him to drive me over, I don’t think I finished one answer to the questions he popped at me. He’d cut in, blow his horn, feed gas, or do something that made it impossible to talk.
    He was that way tonight, soon as he got home. She’d called him, so he knew she was there, and the lights were on very friendly. You’d have thought he’d have lingered with a young wife who had been away, going inside with her when she stepped out the kitchen door. But he had no sooner spoken to her than he was calling to me that I should help him unload. I was back of the cottage, splitting the wood I had sawed, and was perfectly willing to help with whatever he had. But I hated to leg it, while he stood snapping his fingers and slapping his luggage compartment. Thermos buckets were in it, that he said went to the kitchen, and hams in muslin bags, that he said went to storage. She took the buckets from me and set them down. Then she led on to the cold room, which was a low brick building across the patio from the cottage. It had a Yale lock, which she opened, and steel racks inside with rows of hooks, where I hung the hams as she told me.
    When we came out he was off in the field, looking at my tree. It was easy to see in the dark, looking like a fire in a Western oil field; I’d done it all as she said, using plenty of sawdust, as it turned out they had a lot of it, stored for smoking the hams. So you could have read the print in a newspaper when I stepped up beside him and said: “I’m sorry it took so long, sir. One whole day to get out just one tree. But—”
    “Could you get it out at all —that’s what I wanted to know. Naturally it had to take time. I knew that. But you did it, and you did it right. Filling that hole, burning the stump—just right. I hadn’t expected it, but the ash’ll be wonderful fertilizer. We’ll plow it in, then disk it, with lime and the regular stuff. We’ll be set by the first of May to put in our corn. I’m well pleased, Duke. Now I know you’re my man.”
    I’d have been better pleased if he’d let me say something once, but at least he seemed to mean well, and I went to the cottage to dress, as at least I had slacks, sport coat, and a couple of clean shirts.
    Dinner, I must say, was remarkable, verging on art. Some of it, the hot vegetables and cold dessert, came from the Thermos buckets, the ones he brought from the Ladyship. But the steak was out of the storage room, the biggest piece of sirloin I think I ever saw. He brought it in the living-room, and told me crease with my fingers where I wanted mine cut. I creased an inch, and with the knife he marked an inch and a half. He marked his own, a half-inch minute steak. But when he went to the kitchen she followed him out. I heard her say: “No, Val, please! Cut me