It was astonishing how much they could laugh. They laughed when the sizzling hog meat spat hot grease into their faces. They laughed when Jerry leaned too heavily on the table leaf and almost overturned it. They laughed when they saw flies buzzing in the sunny window pane, a sure sign of warm weather. They laughed when the new butcher knife fell on the floor and stuck daggerwise into the soft pine board. And when there was nothing whatever to laugh at, they laughed at nothing whatever, because laugh they must.
The first sleep in Uncle Nat Carberry's walnut bed was disturbed by no ghost dreams of the tragedies, comedies, and tragi-comedies that had been witnessed by that ancient piece of furniture. If old beds and chairs, like old houses, are haunted, it is to the lonely and the disillusioned that they reveal themselves. Before young lovers they stand abashed and hug their secrets to their bosoms. The old bed received them in its arms as though they were its first pair of lovers. And when at last they fell asleep under the gay patchwork quilts, they slept as soundly as two children until the early March dawn brought them their first waking together--supreme of moments!
But life could not be all play for Jerry and Judith, nor did they in the least expect it to be so. Work had never as yet showed its ugly side to them, hence they had no dread of it. They were accustomed to work and expected to do so all their lives as a matter of course. How else could they use up all the abundant strength and energy that surged each day as from an inexhaustible wellspring into their young bodies? So on the third morning Jerry harnessed up his new team and went forth whistling to plow the land that was to be put into corn. Judith watched him disappear over the brow of the ridge, then went back into the house and washed up the dishes and set the rooms to rights. Having done this she went out again into the sunny dooryard.
She had always disliked the insides of houses. The gloom of little-windowed rooms, the dead chill or the heavy heat as the fire smouldered or blazed, the prim, set look of tables and cupboards that stood always in the same places engaged in the never ending occupation of collecting dust both above and beneath: these things stifled and depressed her. She was always glad to escape into the open where there was light, life, and motion and the sun and the wind kept things clean. So, having done up her morning chores, she went out into the yard and busied herself with building chicken coops out of packing boxes. She worked away happily, unmindful of the passing of time, until she was startled to hear the rattle of harness and Jerry's voice calling "Whoa," to the horses.