To her the father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile accordingly.
They wore pitiably clad; like many farm-children, indeed, they could hardly be said to be clad at all.

Sadie had on but two garments, a sort of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare, yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered with scratches.
The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants like their father's, made out of brown-denims by the mother's never-resting hands--hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, and churned.

The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which now looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.
Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if men had been as kind to her as Nature.

But she looked dully out upon the seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the bobolinks and larks sprang.