“But I can’t have them. Please, John—with my head aching already.”
“Don’t speak so loud,” John said warningly.
Mrs. Farnshaw came and had to have her team tied to the barnyard fence. She walked to the house with the rest of the company, and even in their presence could not restrain her complaints because she had not been notified of her daughter’s serious illness and the arrival of the child. Elizabeth’s protest that they had been absorbed by that illness, and too busy to think of anything but the most urgent and immediate duties, did not quiet the objections, for Mrs. Farnshaw had the habit of weak insistence. Her mother’s whine was never so hard to bear.
“Where’s Mr. Farnshaw?” Mr. Crane asked. “He’s grandpa now.”
Elizabeth shrank into her pillows, and Mrs. Farnshaw bridled angrily.
“He’s busy,” was her tart reply.
“I should think he’d want t’ see his grandson. Lizzie, you haven’t showed me that boy,” Mr. Crane insisted.
And Elizabeth, weak and worn, had to draw the sleeping child from under the quilts at her side and show him off as if he had been a roll of butter at a country fair, while constant reference was made to one phase or another of the unpleasant things in her experience. Her colour deepened and her head thumped more and more violently, and by noon when they trooped out to the dining room, where Hepsie had a good dinner waiting, the girl-wife was worn out. She could not eat the food brought to her, but drank constantly, and was unable to get a snatch of sleep before the visitors assembled about her bed again.
At four o’clock Doctor Morgan arrived and Luther Hansen came for Sadie. Sadie saw him drive in, and laughed unpleasantly.
“Luther wasn’t a bit for comin’, but I told him I’d come over with ma, an’ he could come after me. He’s always chicken-hearted, an’ said since Lizzie was so sick we oughtn’t t’ come. I don’t see as you’re s’ sick, Lizzie; you’ve got lots of good colour in your face, an’ th’ way you pull that baby around don’t look much like you was goin’ t’ kick the bucket just yet.”