Why had she been given such a child? It seemed the cruelest irony of chance that had bound her by this strong added link to the sodden life of the soil.
Sitting by the sick child through the long vigils of the winter night, the mother dwelt upon these thoughts, facing them squarely. And following them out to the end they brought her relentlessly to the conclusion that it would be better that the child should die. But having come within sight of this conclusion, she turned with instinctive horror and fled away from it. No, she could not have her baby die. She must not die. And yet better children were dying on every side. Why not hers as well as another's? The mother shrank and quailed, feeling her burden greater than she could bear.
As she struggled with these bitter thoughts, the moon, which had passed the full, looked palely into the lamplit room through the tracery made by a dead grapevine against the uncurtained window and saw her sitting gaunt and hollow-eyed, her sharp elbows propped on her knees and her chin in her hands. Again she restlessly paced the floor or stood by the window looking out and taking no comfort from the dumb stretch of hills and valleys that lay dark and lonely under the waning moon.
When it came Jerry's turn to watch by the baby, he was troubled by no such conflict of feelings. His one thought was that the child must be saved. He loved her with all the tenderness that fathers of his nature give to an only daughter, and he saw in her no defect nor resemblance to any other child. She was his girl and she must not be allowed to die.
For nearly a week the child lay tossing and moaning, seeming to be kept alive more by the hectic flicker of fever than by any more stable vital throb. The mother and father alternated in watching over her, silently doing what they could. They grew pale and red-eyed from lack of sleep, frowsy and unkempt. Above the tense strain of the anxiety that held them in grip, the dark cloud of their estrangement hovered with cold oppression. They rarely spoke except when they had to. At meals they sat opposite each other in gloomy silence. When, as sometimes happened, their eyes accidentally met across the bed of the sick child, they turned hastily away with mutual aversion.
At last, after a long night of feverish tossing, there came a morning when the little one seemed somewhat better. She breathed easier and the fever had sunk away leaving her pale and weak but more like the child that her parents knew. Was this a change for the better? Or might it possibly be one for the worse?
About the middle of the morning Dr. MacTaggert came. As he made his examination of the child the parents stood behind him watching anxiously, but never once casting a glance at each other.
"Why, she's a heap better," he said at last, turning around to them. "There's not much of her, but she seems to know how to hang onto life better than some of the stouter ones. The worst seems to be over now, and I reckon you'll raise her yet if all goes well."
"Judy!" said Jerry, when the doctor had closed the door. The one word was full of many things, like a bubble drifting through sunlight.
She fled to him and fell sobbing into his arms.