But they all said, ``No, your time will come. Enjoy being a bride while you can.''

There was no room for company in the tiny Weaning House (where the Albright boys always took their brides, till they could get a house and a farm of their own). So when the Big House filled up and ran over, the sisters-in-law found beds for everyone in their own homes. And there was still not anything that Linda Kay could do.

So Linda Kay gave up asking, and accepted her reprieve. Without saying so, she was really grateful; for to attend the dying was something she had never experienced, and certainly had not imagined when she thought of the duties she would have as Bobby Joe's wife. She had made curtains for all the windows of her little house, and she had kept it spotless and neat, shabby as it was, and cooked good meals for Bobby Joe. She had done all the things she had promised herself she would do, but she had not thought of this. People died, she would have said, in hospitals, or in cars on the highway at night.

Bobby Joe was gone all day now, not coming in for dinner and sometimes not for supper. When they first married he had been working in the fields all day, and she would get in the car and drive to wherever he was working, to take him a fresh hot meal. Now there was no work in the fields, nor would there be till it rained, and she did not know where he went. Not that she complained, or had any cause to. Four or five of the cousins from East Texas were about his age, so naturally they ran around together. There was no reason for her to ask what they did.