But when they arrive at the store they are greeted by a haggard and disheveled woman, with missing teeth, who is brandishing a rifle and appears mentally unstable.
The travellers purchase an embrocation to treat the injured horse, and ask if they can camp overnight in a field on the property.
The woman's daughter claims to be drawing a nude picture of the narrator, saying she watched her bathing in the river earlier.
As she gets more drunk the woman confides that her husband often beats her, forces sex on her, and goes away for months at a time, leaving her alone and isolated.
At the woman’s suggestion, Jim and the narrator agree to sleep in the storeroom with the child, while Jo bunks down in the main room.
The text is written prior to Mansfield's shift to the modernist mode, with a linear narrative and conventional resolution in denouement.