She looked out of place, with her bare lumpy legs, not touched by the sun, her apron still on and damp across the stomach from the supper dishes. (Munro 596).
The narrator had problems coming to terms with the role that she was expected to lead in life. While the girl loved the work outside she hated to do the "woman's work" inside. She disliked her mother for making her do it, and believed that her mother only made her do it because she didn't like it. She didn't like anything about this work. "I hated the hot dark kitchen in the summer" (p. 530). She felt that working in the kitchen was endless, depressing and unimportant compared to the work she did for her father. She would do a chore for her mother and then run off before she could tell her to do anything else. She had a very low opinion about her mother. She felt that the only thing her mother talked about were things that were unimportant to her. She thought that her mother was undependable, easily fooled, conniving and ignorant about the way things really were. She wanted to work outside with her father doing the work that she deemed important. The narrator was not considered of any consequential help to her father, simply because she was female.
"Could of fooled me," said the salesman. "I thought it was only a girl"(p. 529). Even though the narrator could do more work than her younger brother, she still wasn't appreciated. "Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you'll have a real help" (p. 530). Laird, on the other hand, was able to go out and do the things that he enjoyed. For example when Flora, the family's horse, runs away Laird is invited to join the father and his assistant to re-capture the horse, while the narrator must stay at home.
When the narrator is reminiscing of the past, she recalls a time when she lured Laird up to the top of the barn. The whole purpose of this idea was to get Laird in trouble.