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They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy?
It was along this highway that the motor bus, filled with passengers and baggage and driven with considerably more haste than discretion, carried the newly married pair. Annie's eyes grew wide at the wonder and beauty of it. She was not at all afraid. She snuggled her hand into Wes's and loved it and loved him, too, with his look of pride and joy in her.
T'-morrow mawnin' come, he's outer it." Her voice rose into a minor cadence, almost a chant. "Chile, it's a dahk shadder on all de Deans dey all mahked wid dat frown on deir foreheads, an' dey all got dahk hours come to um. Marse Wes's maw she fade out an' die caze she cain' stan' no such. His grammaw, she leave his grampaw. An' so on back.
Far away she could hear the steady susurrus of the reaper, driven against the golden wheat, and the sound was a promise and a song to her ears. She looked up now and then at the pictured face of Wes's father, frowning and passionate, and the faint smile of a conqueror curved her tired mouth. For she had found and proved the strongest thing in the world, and she would never again know fear.
At Frederick they left the big motor bus and got into Wes's own rackety flivver, the possession of which delighted Annie's heart. "My land, I never thought I'd get married to a man that owned an automobile," she confessed with flattering frankness in her voice. "This ain't an automobile," said Wes. "It's a coffeepot, and an awful mean one. Sometimes she won't boil, no matter what I do."
Behind Wes's back Aunt Dolcey made signs to her husband for silence. "I tell you you're a liar, and by rights I ought to cut your lying tongue out of your head! I haven't even seen that pitchfork for three days, and when I went to look for it just now I found it in the stable where you'd had it cleaning out the stalls. Now shut up and get out about your work!
It was this that Wes's rage was the same, whether the cause of it was real or imaginary. The advancing summer, with its sultriness, its sudden evening storms shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid, subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden nervous tears.
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