“Yes,” said Franklin, “it will make you rich,” and as they walked about he pointed out with Western enthusiasm the merits of the country round-about.

The “bite to eat” was in time duly announced by a loud, sonorous note that arose swelling upon the air.  Aunt Lucy appeared at the kitchen door, her fat cheeks distended, blowing a conch as though this were Tidewater over again.

The long table was spread in the large room of general assembly, this room being, as has been mentioned, excavated from the earth, so that, as they sat at table, their heads were perhaps nearly level with the surface of the ground.  The short side walls, topped with a heavy earthen roof made of this sort of abode a domicile rude and clumsy enough, but one not lacking in a certain comfort.  In the winter it was naturally warm, and in the summer it was cool, the air, caught at either end by the gable of the roof, passing through and affording freshness to the somewhat cellar-like interior.  Cut off from the main room were three smaller rooms, including the kitchen, from which Aunt Lucy passed back and forth with massive tread.  The table was no polished mahogany, but was built of rough pine boards, and along it stood long benches instead of chairs.  For her “white folks” Aunt Lucy spread a cloth at one end of this long table, placing also in order the few pieces of china and silver that had survived a life of vicissitudes.

“I may be poor,” said Buford, commenting grimly on the rude appearance of the board, “and I reckon we always will be poor, but when the time comes that I can’t have a silver spoon in my coffee, then I want to die.”

“Major!” said Mrs. Buford reprovingly from the head of the table, where she sat in state, “I do not like to hear you speak in that way.  We are in the hands of the Lord.”

“Quite right,” said Buford, “and I beg pardon.  But, really, this country does bring some changes, and we ourselves surely change with it.  No one seems to think of the past out here.”

“Don’ you b’lieve I don’ never think o’ the past!” broke in a deep and uninvited voice, much to Mrs. Buford’s disquietude.  “This yer sho’hly is a lan’ o’ Sodom an’ Tomorrow.  Dey ain’t a sengle fiahplace in the hull country roun’ yer.  When I sells mer lan’ fer a hundred dollahs, fust thing I’m a-goin’ do is to build me a fiahplace an’ git me er nice big settle to putt in front o’ hit, so’st I kin set mer bread to raise befo’ the fiah, like all bread orter be sot.  How kin a pusson cook out yet—­not to say, cook?”

“That will do, Lucy,” said Mrs. Buford.

“We are demoralized,” said Mary Ellen hopelessly, “and I resent it.  I resent your knowing us or knowing anything about our lives.  If you had never heard anything at all about us it mightn’t have been so bad.  We came out here to get away from every one.”

Franklin bit his lip.  “Mary Ellen, my child!” cried Mrs. Buford.