The Land of Content

by Edith Barnard Delano

As she watched the child, another thought presented itself, caused her cheeks to burn in the dark, sent a wave of disgust and shame over her: these people, who had added nothing to the city's harm, recognized their responsibility to the city's offspring; whereas Flood and Pendleton, her sister and herself, who fed upon the city and its workers, would almost have left the boy by the roadside, but for very shame of one another. Her friends believed her whimsical, unreasonable, utterly foolish to watch beside him through one night; and she had been, in her inmost heart, taking credit to herself for doing so!

She asked herself whether, indeed, she would have remained, if it had not been for the compelling force of Ogilvie, no less insistent for being unvoiced. She recalled what Flood had told her about him; yet, now that she had met him, all of Flood's enthusiasm did not seem to explain the man, and she smiled as she remembered how little of that enthusiasm poor Flood had shown in his disgust at Ogilvie's quiet demand for her assistance. She felt suddenly ashamed as she admitted to herself her secret delight in teasing Flood and Cecilia and Marshall by obeying the doctor's appeal. In her growing humility she was almost ready to believe that there had been no impulse of good in her remaining. Yet she knew that she would have had to remain, even if the others had not been there. What manner of man, she wondered, was this red-headed country doctor who had first aroused the admiration of a man like Benson Flood, and now had forced Rosamund Randall to perform a service that, a day before, she would have thought a menial one? Certainly he must differ in many respects from the men she had hitherto met.

The loudly ticking clock on the kitchen mantel struck off hour after hour. A lusty cock began calling his fellows long before the fading of the stars. Rosamund, standing again at the breast-high casement of the little window, for the first time in her life watched the day break. Rosy fingers of light reached up from the eastern mountains; valley and hillsides threw off their purple and silver wrappings of night, and gradually took on their natural colors; little fitful gusts of air, sweet with night-drawn fragrance, touched her face at the window; from their nests in the near-by fruit-trees faint, sleepy twitterings soon increased to a joyful chorus of bird music; the shadows melted, it was day, and the world awoke; but it was a new world to Rosamund. She had touched the pulse of life, and with the dawn there was born in her heart a purpose, feeble and immature as yet, but as surely purpose as the newborn babe is man.

Father Cary came up the mountain early to attend to his cattle, bringing word that his daughter was not so well, and that Mother Cary could not leave her until later in the day, but that Miss Randall was to feel at home, and Yetta was to do all she could for her comfort. He had made breakfast ready by the time Rosamund came into the kitchen; and presently Yetta stumbled down the stairs, yawning and sleepy-eyed.

"Gee!" she said, by way of morning greeting, "If this place ain't the limit for sleep! When I first come up here I jist had to set up in bed an' listen to the quiet; kept me awake all night, it did. Now I want to sleep all day an' all night, too! Ain't it the limit?"

"But that's the best thing in the world for you," Rosamund said, and smiled at her. The girl must have divined a difference in the smile, for she beamed cheerfully back.

"That's what Doctor Ogilvie says," she replied. "All's the matter with me is m'eyes. Y'see I been sewin' ever since I's about as big as a peanut; first I sewed on buttons to help my mother, an' then I sewed beads. There was my mother an' me an' m'father, on'y he wasn't ever there; an' we had four boarders. Course the boarders had to set next to the light, an' I couldn't see very well. Then after my mother died, I sewed collars day-times and beads at night, till I got the job in the shirt-waist shop. Tha's where m'eyes got inspected—they don't never inspect you till you get a good job. It don't do me no good to know my eyes is bad; I could a told 'em that m'self—only thing is, that was the reason they sent me up here, so I've that much to thank 'em for, I guess. Still, I——"

But Father Cary interrupted the stream of chatter. "Now look a here," he said, "supposin' you do less talkin' an' more eatin'! Two glasses of milk, two dishes o' oatmeal, and two eggs is what you got to get away with before you get up from this table."

But Yetta's tongue was irrepressible. "You watch me!" she replied, and grinned at him, her black eyes sparkling. "That's another funny thing about the country," she informed Rosamund, nodding. It was evident that she believed Miss Randall to be as much a stranger to the country as she herself had been. "In the city all you want to eat in the mornin' is a bite o' bread an' some tea; nobody ever heard o' eatin' eggs in the mornin', nor oatmeal any other time; but here—Gee! I can stow away eggs while the band plays on, an' tea ain't in it with milk—this yere kind o' milk!"

Rosamund's strained ear caught a faint rustle from the inner room; she sprang up, followed closely by the others; the child had moved his head, and his eyes were closed; before that they had been ever so slightly open. Rosamund laid her hand upon his forehead, bent down so that his breath fanned her soft cheek. Then she looked up at Father Cary.