noon
She went to her work in early morning , bareheaded , in a limp pink dress very much open at the throat , which happened to be the merciful mode of the moment -- a slender , sweet-lipped thing , beginning to move with grace now -- and her chestnut hair burned gold-pale by the sun . * * * * * There came that movable holiday in August , when the annual shutdown for repairs closed the mill and box factory during forty-eight hours -- a matter of prescribing oil and new bearings for the overfed machines so that their digestions should remain unimpaired and their dispositions amiable . It was a hot August morning , intensely blue and still , with that slow , subtle concentration of suspended power in the sky , ominous of thunder brooding somewhere beyond the western edges of the world . Ruhannah aided her mother with the housework , picked peas and a squash and a saucer full of yellow pansies in the weedy little garden , and , at noon , dined on the trophies of her husbandry , physically and æsthetically . After dinner , dishes washed and room tidied , she sat down on the narrow , woodbine-infested verandah with pencil and paper , and attempted to draw the stone bridge and the little river where it spread in deeps and shallows above the broken dam . Perspective was unknown to her ; of classic composition she was also serenely ignorant , so the absence of these in her picture did not annoy her . On the contrary , there was something hideously modern and recessional in her vigorous endeavour to include in her drawing everything her grey eyes chanced to rest on .