"Good Gawd, man," she exclaimed in exasperation, "air you so good fer nuthin' you couldn't even wash a cup clean?"
"Aw, shet up. You're too damn fussy," he growled, and flung out of the room with the milk bucket.
She glared after him, her black brows drawn together with concentrated fury. She was holding in her hand a little bowl. It had been rinsed through cold dish water and her fingers felt the inside smeared with grease. She gave a sharp exclamation of disgust and with a sudden movement threw the bowl against the stove where it crashed into a dozen pieces. For a moment she stood looking at the pieces of the broken bowl, and her lips curled into an upward twist of sardonic satisfaction. The lip was lifted from the teeth as a dog's lip is lifted in a snarl. Then a heavy dismalness settled down upon her. She swept up the pieces and went on drearily about her work.
The tobacco market opened with fine prices, some of the growers who had especially good crops getting as high as thirteen or fourteen cents a pound. Hat and Luke were excited beyond words. However, on the day that Luke hauled his crop to Lexington, the market had fallen off somewhat and he averaged only nine cents a pound. He and Hat would have been amply satisfied with this if some of the neighbors' crops had not brought higher prices. They were tormented by the thought that if they had been a few days earlier, or perhaps a few days later they might have got a cent a pound more. They calculated again and again how much this would amount to. Even half a cent a pound would have made a very considerable difference. Hat thought about all the things that she might have done with chis difference. Luke, who was not so unlearned in figures as in letters, meditated on the change it would have made in his bank book. Being childless and stingy, he had become the owner of a small but steadily growing bank account. The minds of both burned and seethed with these restless promptings of avarice.
Hat permitted herself only one extravagance. She "sent off" to Sears Roebuck for the reddest sateen petticoat in the whole catalog. She had long coveted this petticoat, devouring the colored picture of the flaming garment with greedy eyes. When it arrived, after examining it in the most minute detail, she laid it reverently in the bureau drawer; and for the first few days opened the drawer at least a half dozen times a day to make sure that it was still there. When she went visiting on Sundays she wore it.