Summary

It is afternoon, and Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Cope are working in Mrs. Cope's garden. Mrs. Pritchard, a large woman with a small face, works for Mrs. Cope. She is describing a wake she had recently attended for a woman who had died giving birth while confined to an iron lung. As they work, Mrs. Cope's young daughter watches from an upstairs window in the house.

Mrs. Cope is a small, trim woman who has little patience for Mrs. Pritchard's stories. As a result, she often tries to steer the conversation to more pleasant topics, a tactic that seems to annoy Mrs. Pritchard.

As the child watches from the window, she thinks about her mother's obsessive worry that a fire will start in the woods that surround their property. She thinks about the evenings they spend on the porch watching the...