1 Mattie was washing up the dishes, humming one of the dance tunes of the night before.
2 She answered "All right, Ethan," and he heard her singing over the dishes as he went.
3 She went out of the kitchen and Mattie, rising, began to clear the dishes from the table.
4 She sprang to her feet as Ethan entered and carried the covered dish of meat-pie to the table.
5 Mattie, when the meal was over, went about her usual task of clearing the table and washing up the dishes.
6 She set the lamp on the table, and he saw that it was carefully laid for supper, with fresh doughnuts, stewed blueberries and his favourite pickles in a dish of gay red glass.
7 If he glued it together the next morning months might elapse before his wife noticed what had happened, and meanwhile he might after all be able to match the dish at Shadd's Falls or Bettsbridge.
8 There he lit a candle-end, opened the china-closet, and, reaching his long arm up to the highest shelf, laid the pieces together with such accuracy of touch that a close inspection convinced him of the impossibility of detecting from below that the dish was broken.
9 She had plunged the breakfast dishes into a tin dish-pan and was bending above it with her slim arms bared to the elbow, the steam from the hot water beading her forehead and tightening her rough hair into little brown rings like the tendrils on the traveller's joy.
10 The next morning at breakfast Jotham Powell was between them, and Ethan tried to hide his joy under an air of exaggerated indifference, lounging back in his chair to throw scraps to the cat, growling at the weather, and not so much as offering to help Mattie when she rose to clear away the dishes.