“Where you been?” she asked.
“Out t’ th’ barn. Heard a noise an’ thought I’d better look into it,” was Silas’s reply.
As the sun rose the new life was ushered in. Doctor Morgan did not start home till after nine o’clock.
“Who is to have charge of your wife, Mr. Hunter?” he asked as he paused in the door and looked back at his patient anxiously. Seven miles was a long distance—and she might need him suddenly.
“Why, I thought Hepsie and I could care for her,” John replied. Trained nurses were unheard of in those days.
“It simply cannot be,” answered the old man. (Doctor Stubbins had not been engaged.) “Another attack like this last one would—well, you must have some one of experience here. It’s a matter of life or death—at least it might be,” he added under his breath. “Couldn’t you stay?” he asked Susan Hornby, who sat with the baby on her knee. “The girl’s liable to slip away from us before I could get here.”
It was arranged that Aunt Susan should stay with the young mother, who was too weak to turn her head on the pillow it lay upon, for as the old doctor had said she was a desperately sick girl. They had but just kept her with them. The presence of Aunt Susan was almost as delightful to Elizabeth Hunter as the head of the child on her arm. Weak and exhausted, she was permitted such rest as she had not known in all the days of her married life. The darkened room and the quiet of the next three days were such a mercy to her tired nerves that she would have been glad to lie there for ages. Doctor Morgan let Susan Hornby return to her home and husband at the end of the week, confident that with care, Hepsie could perform the little offices required, but he was to learn that country people have little judgment in serious cases of illness, and that the young mother’s room would be filled with company when he came out the next day.
Mr. and Mrs. Crane were the first to arrive on Sunday morning, and when John announced that they were driving up to the hitching post, Elizabeth begged weakly for him to say that she was too ill to see any one that day. John would have been glad to deliver that message, remembering the wedding day, but Sadie was with her mother, and John had found Luther a convenient neighbour of late.
“We can’t offend them,” he said.