"Is that you, Tom?"
"Who else?" Leaping from the rig, he tied the reins to the fence.
"I'm not speaking to you!" Ann whirled, the bucket in her hands slopping.
"No!" cried Cecy.
Ann froze. She looked at the hills and the first spring stars. She stared at the man named Tom, Cecy made her drop the bucket.
"Look what you've done!"
Tom ran up.
"Look what you made me do!"
He wiped her shoes with a kerchief, laughing.
"Get away!" She kicked at his hands, but he laughed again, and gazing down on him from miles away, Cecy saw the turn of his head, the size o
f his skull, the flare of his nose, the shine of his eye, the girth of his shoulder, and the hard strength of his hands doing this delicate thing with the handkerchief. Peering down from the secret attic of this lovely head, Cecy yanked a hidden copper ventriloquist's wire and the pretty mouth popped wide: "Thank you!"
"Oh, so you have manners?" The smell of leather on his hands, the smell of the horse rose from his clothes into the tender nostrils, and Cecy, far, far away over night meadows and flowered fields, stirred as with some dream in her bed.
"Not for you, no!" said Ann.
"Hush, speak gently," said Cecy. She moved Ann's fingers out toward Tom's head Ann snatched them back.
"I've gone mad!"
"You have." He nodded, smiling but bewildered. "Were you going to touch me then?"
"I don't know. Oh, go away!" Her cheeks glowed with pink charcoals.
"Why don't you run? I'm not stopping you." Tom got up. "Have you changed your mind? Will you go to the dance with me tonight? It's special. Tell you why later."
"No," said Ann.
"Yes!" cried Cecy. "I've never danced. I want to dance. I've never worn a long gown, all rustly. I want that. I want to dance all night. I've never known what it's like to be in a woman, dancing; Father and Mother would never permit it. Dogs, cats, locusts, leaves, everything else in the world at one time or another I've known, but never a woman in the spring, never on a night like this. Oh, please--we must go to that dance!"
She spread her thought like the fingers of a hand within a new glove.
"Yes," said Ann Leary, "I'll go. I don't know why, but I'll go to the dance with you tonight, Tom."
"Now inside, quick!" cried Cecy. "You must wash, tell your folks, get your gown ready, out with the iron, into your room!"
"Mother," said Ann, "I've changed my mind!"
The rig was galloping off down the pike, the rooms of the farmhouse jumped to life, water was boiling for a bath, the coal stove was heating an iron to press the gown, the mother was rushing about with a fringe of hairpins in her mouth. "What's come over you, Ann? You don't like Tom!"
"That's true." Ann stopped amidst the great fever.
But it's spring! thought Cecy.
"It's spring," said Ann.
And it's a fine night for dancing, thought Cecy.
"... for dancing," murmured Ann Leary.