“Eat now,” she said. “Throw away the sad face. Later, I tell you your troubles in the palm.”
The gypsy band ate leisurely in spite of their appetite, taking time out for arguments, waving pieces of meat in the air to accent a point, falling to the food again, the argument ending as unexpectedly as it had begun. The children gnawed on bones sideways like young foxes. The highly seasoned stew burned Ase’s throat, but he had always liked it. He had a second bowl, refusing Nellie’s familiar dishes. The women praised her cooking. The children could not get enough of the sweets and the warm creamy milk. The orchard was probed by a rosy light, was abandoned by it. The twilight was the blue of the hickory smoke. Then it too drifted across the valley, trailed over the hilltops and was gone. There
