noon
Before any sod had been laid , the eldest brother had marked out on the ground with a stick a nine-foot square , and in one side of it had left a narrow door-space where two scantlings were driven in upright to serve as sides of the casing . Then , with the dirt lines as a guide , he had begun the walls , giving them the thickness of two sods . When the little girl rode up they were already above her head . But she did not wait to see the load she had accompanied bring them up to the eldest brother 's waist , for it was close upon noon and it occurred to her that there would soon be a table to set in the kitchen , so she hurried out of call up the weedy path between the wheat and the corn , to where the oxen were still lazily drawing the plow . She picked up the gad again and sent it whisking about the black flanks of the steers . But when she had gone up and down till three long sods lay lapping each other like heavy ruffles , she grew tired of following the biggest brother and went up the carnelian bluff to the stone pile and sat down . Her mother , standing at the kitchen door , shading her eyes with her hand , saw the fluttering blue calico on the hillside and smiled at it through tears .