Her humming voice soothed and satisfied him as of old. He listened to it as to a familiar song heard again after many years. He did not catch the words of the song, nor care to. It was the air and its associations that held his heart. Then he woke from his dream to find the woman at his side saying:
"I shall wait over harvest. I promised Mr. Gander that. See I work good as a man. Better'n some, hap," with a gleam of the old Ruth and a little backward toss of the head. "Then I shall goo."
Ernie roused swiftly.
"Where'll you goo then?"
"Back to service."
Ernie was staggered.
"And what about her?" nodding at the baby gurgling and squirming in the grass.
Ruth answered nothing, but her face stiffened.
He felt in her the fierce and formidable power he had felt on the previous evening beside the stream.
Here was not the Ruth he had known. Nature had roused in the mother forces, beautiful but terrible, of which the maid had not been conscious.