She was one of the few remaining members of the old "first families" of Kentucky. Her haughty aquiline nose, broad brow and penetrating eyes showed that she had intellect and breeding. In the old days, several decades before the Civil War, her father had purchased hundreds of acres in Scott County for twenty-five cents an acre. He cleared the land, realized about a hundred dollars an acre out of the timber and still possessed his hundreds of acres of fine clay loam, virgin soil, only needing the seed to produce enormous crops of almost anything. So he became rich and built this leisurely white mansion. The war brought disaster and poverty. Aunt Eppie's father was one of the few landed proprietors who did not move away but remained to begin life over again as a poor farmer. In the school of penury, Aunt Eppie, applying her superior intellect and energy, proved to be all too apt a scholar. She learned not only to be saving but to be niggardly and penurious.
Uncle Ezra had been one of Aunt Eppie's father's hired hands. He was of much commoner clay than his wife and with age had become a mere clod. Almost as deaf as one of his own well planted fence posts, he heard nothing nor cared to hear. He spoke rarely and in half articulate grunts. His one thought in life had always been how to get the most out of his land, which was not his, but Aunt Eppie's, as she was not slow to remind him when the occasion arose. Now that he was too old to work hard he spent his days puttering about the fields and the barnyard watching, always watching. He had the reputation of being the hardest man to work for in the whole of Scott County and he paid the lowest wages.
Once in a while Aunt Eppie's brother, Hiram Stone, ate a meal in the house. He was a spare, silent man. Since his wife's death many years before he had lived attended by one old servant, in the big, rambling house on his estate. Nobody quite knew how he passed his days. He had been seen to read, to cultivate a little patch of vegetables and flowers, and to smoke meditatively on the back porch. In his youth he had been sent away to college. He always employed an overseer and had very little to do with his tenants. Nobody ever called him "Uncle Hiram." This was because he lived his life to himself and his life was not their life. He was not niggardly and interfering like Uncle Ezra and many of the other landlords. He allowed his tenants to keep a cow and pasture it on his land. He put no limit to the number of their chickens and turkeys. Yet the tenants distrusted and avoided him. They would rather work under Uncle Ezra, because he was one of themselves and they understood him.