Elizabeth’s indignation was cooled slightly by the genuineness of the speech, but she did not understand the last sentence till her eye happened to fall on Sadie’s form. In a flash she saw what was meant. Forgetting her hurt, she was silent from pure delight. She knew what a child would mean in that home. The other misunderstood her silence and hastened on with her apologies:
“Honest, Lizzie, I didn’t want to hurt, but they do say such mean things about it that I want you t’ know. Why don’t you ever take Mrs. Hunter and th’ baby and go t’ meetin’?”
Elizabeth’s face went white as she realized that she must continue to answer since she had begun.
“I don’t care in the least what they say, Sadie, and I don’t want you ever to mention this to me again,” she said sternly.
Sadie’s face worked in silent misery till she could control her voice.
“You won’t be mad at me, Lizzie? I told Luther I wouldn’t be mean t’ nobody till it was born,” she said with quivering lip.
Elizabeth took some seconds to consider the thing that had been told to her. It was of far more importance than the gossip Sadie had just hinted at, but the gossip must be answered first.
“I won’t be mad at you at all,” she said after a moment. “That is, I won’t if I never have to listen to such things again. I don’t care in the least, if I don’t have to hear it. Don’t ever come to me again with anything that anybody says. Now, then, tell me about yourself. I half believe you’re glad of it.”
“Glad?” Sadie told her secret, which could be a secret no more. Luther had wanted the child, and she had come to the point of wanting it for his sake, and the sight of chubby Jack Hunter had aroused the latent mother love in her till, as she talked, her eyes shone with the brightness of imaginative maternity. She implored Elizabeth to come to her aid when the day of her labour arrived in September, and rambled along telling of their preparations for its coming, and little home incidents, disclosing a home life of so sweet a character that if Elizabeth Hunter had not been sincere and utterly without jealousy she would have drawn the discussion to a close.
The incident had a peculiar effect upon Elizabeth. She began really to like Sadie, and all her old desire for harmony in the home welled up in her anew. The old attitude of self-blame was assumed also. Here was Sadie Crane, the most spiteful girl that had ever been raised on these prairies, able to command the love and respect of the man she had married, to do things because her husband desired them, even so difficult a thing as the bearing of children, and she, Elizabeth, had failed to accomplish any of these things. There was a renewed resolve to be more patient. Elizabeth hated sulking, and the remembrance of the day when she had gone to sign the mortgage and had been unable to respond to John’s good-humoured willingness to get abundant supplies because she saw the money going out so fast was fixed in her mind with new significance. Here was Sadie doing the things that her husband wished of her and obtaining not only his love but her own self-respect, while she, Elizabeth, was able to command neither. Instead of reasoning upon the differences between the two husbands, Elizabeth reasoned on the differences between her own actions and those of Sadie, and from the results of that reasoning entered upon a period of self-denial and abject devotion to the man of her choice. John Hunter accepted this new devotion with satisfied serenity, and, not being obstructed in any of his little exactions, became more cheerful and agreeable to live with. This added to Elizabeth’s conviction that the difficulty had been somewhat within herself. She ceased to ask for the things which caused friction, and there was a season of comparative peace.