Three days before the "smash-up," Ethan goes one evening to meet Mattie, who is socializing at a church dance, and walk her home. He feels jealous when he observes Denis Eady, a local grocer and proprietor of the livery stable, flirting and dancing with Mattie. After Mattie refuses a ride home with Eady, she and Ethan walk home arm-in-arm.
The next day, Zeena tells Ethan that she's going to Bettsbridge to see Doctor Buck and spending the night with her Aunt Martha Pierce. Zeena asks Ethan to drive her to the train station, but Ethan tells her that he can't because he's going to see Andrew Hale, owner of a construction company in Starkfield, to get paid for lumber he sold him. He suggests that Jotham Powell, a man who helps out around the Frome farm, drive her to the train station. Because Ethan had no intention of seeing Hale, he absolves his guilt about lying to Zeena by actually going to see Hale and asking for an advance on his load of lumber. As Ethan expects, Hale declines to pay him then.
That evening, Mattie makes a particularly nice supper for Ethan. She even uses one of Zeena's best dishes, made of red glass, which is stored on the top shelf in the china closet. During the dinner, the cat knocks Zeena's red dish off the table and it breaks on the floor. Ethan pieces the dish together, puts it back on the shelf in the china closet, and promises to glue it together before Zeena returns home. The rest of the evening Ethan and Mattie spend the evening conversing with each other, well content in each other's company.
