Luther saw Elizabeth’s face harden in a sudden contraction of pain, and glanced across at John, but whatever there was about it that hurt belonged to Elizabeth alone, for John Hunter pulled at the flapping laprobes without seeming to have heard clearly and evidently thinking that the remark was addressed to his wife. Dusk was falling, and Luther watched them drive away with a premonition of trouble as the night seemed to close in about them. He turned his back to the wind and stood humped over, peering through the evening at their disappearing forms. He saw Elizabeth snatch at the corner of the robe as they turned into the main road, and dug his own hands deeper into his pockets with his attention turned from Elizabeth and her possible trouble to that of the child.
“Hope th’ little feller don’t ketch cold.” He turned to the house filled with his vision of a baby being cuddled close in a mother’s arms, and with a new understanding of the comfort of such cuddling. His breath flew before him in a frosty stream when he entered the kitchen, and he hastened to build a fire and set the teakettle on to heat. He lighted a lamp and set it on a chair, and also stirred the fire in the little stove in Sadie’s room before he went to milk.
“Wisht Lizzie’d come oftener. Wonder why she don’t. She don’t seem near as stuck-up as she used to. Say, Luther, Lizzie told me th’ queerest thing: she says th’ way a mother feels before a baby’s born makes a difference. She says if a woman’s mean before a child comes It’ll make th’ young one mean too. She told a lot of things that showed it’s true, about folks we know? I wonder how she learns everything? Ain’t she smart! I wisht she’d come oftener. Say, if I ever get that way again——” The sentence was unfinished.
“Wisht ours ’d ’a’ lived,” Luther said longingly.
“Did Lizzie’s baby make you feel that way too?”
Luther went to milk with a song in his heart. The little word “too” told more than all the discussions they had ever had. Sadie had not been pleased about the coming of the child they had lost.
“If I could get ’em together more,” he said wistfully. “It was a good thing t’ have ’er see Lizzie an’ ’er baby together. I hope th’ little Tad don’t ketch cold. That laprobe didn’t stay tucked in very well.”
As he rose from milking the last cow, his mind went back to his visitors.
“Somethin’ hurt Lizzie about th’ buggy ’r somethin’—she’s too peaked for her, too.”
Luther’s premonitions about the Hunter baby were only too well founded. The cold was not serious, but there was a frightened skirmish for hot water and lubricants before morning. The hoarse little cough gave way under the treatment, but the first baby’s first cold is always a thing of grave importance to inexperienced parents, and Elizabeth knew that her chances of getting to go home, or any other place, that winter, were lessened. Her growing fear of neighbourhood criticism outgrew her fear of refusal, however, and at the end of the next week she reminded her husband that she had planned to take the child to see her mother.