We'd talked over boys' names by the bushel without ever coming to a dead-set choice, but we most always squeezed in somewhere, sort of apologetic, a remark that if it should happen to be a girl we'd have to call it Edith L., after its grandmother. Somehow, as I look back on it, it seems as if I'd never thought of that kid, at any time, except as Edith L. Curious how folks will try to fool theirselves that way.
When it come to the auspicious occasion we had Doc Wolfert in, because he was the only doc in our end of town. He certainly was a quaint old bone-setter. Some said he took morphine on the sly, and some said it was just his natural manner, but he was the shiftiest-eyed medic you ever saw. No man livin' ever got him to say plain yes or no. He'd walk all 'round them little words, like he was afraid of steppin' on them, and his gab was full of perhapses and possiblys, and similar slick side-trackers of knowledge.
I had figgered that when the aforesaid auspicious occasion turned up I'd clean out to the woods until things got so I'd be useful as well as ornamental; but when it come to a show-down, I couldn't. Farthest away I could git was the front porch. I done my good twenty miles on the porch that day, I'll bet, and whenever I've had a trial and tribulation time since then, I can hear the sixth board from the south end of that porch squeak.
I was walkin' on the level, but my spirits was climbin' hills and coastin' into valleys. First minute I would be stickin' out my chest and thinkin' how all-fired grand it would be to be a daddy, and the next minute I'd cave in like a frost-bitten squash and wonder how in creation I'd ever drag along as a widow-man. One minute I'd see myself sky-hootin' round with a fine kid on my arm, and the next I'd see myself alone, with Marthy gone. I've got the reputation around here of being a humorist man, but I didn't say no funny sayings to myself that day, that I can remember. I had fever, and cold sweats, and double contraction of the heart, and whenever I thought of Marthy, I couldn't think of a decent thing that I'd ever done to her. I felt I was an ornery, lowdown critter—which I ain't—and I saw Marthy as a spotless angel—which she ain't neither. She's woman and earthly all through, and mighty good earth at that. Marthy never knew what a good chance she lost of being considered a perfectionated saint, but she missed the chance.
Just about when I'd given up all hopes of ever seein' Marthy alive again, Mrs. Murphy, (who we'd got in to sort of give the kid its first toilet, it not being expected to be far enough advanced to do much primping on its own account right at first) come to the door like a blessed ray of sunshine, and percolated out a smile at me.
Loony as I was, I had sense enough left to know that she wasn't smilin' at me for flirtation, nor because she had a smile that she didn't know what to do with and so was passing it out to me, like a hand-out, just to git rid of it. I connected that smile with other things. I knowed she was smiling me back from a desolate widow-hood, or widow-man-hood, or whatever the right word is. I know the right word, but it's got mislaid. Thank the stars I ain't ever had no use for it, and I hope never to have. But I guess every man feels like I did when I was walkin' that porch. When they shut the door on him, and turn him out, and tell him they will call him when they want him, he's a widow-man right from that moment and feels so. And when they call him in and say all's doin' as well as could be expected under the circumstances, right then he feels like his wife had rose from the dead, and he becomes a married man again. I felt so, anyhow, and I don't know as I'm a specially fancy feeler. I don't look it.
Right then I was boosted, like I tell you, from a deep black hole to a high and airy location, and by a plain-faced, baggy Irish lady that did washing by the day at fifty cents a day, and you furnished the soap. She's been my friend ever since, and always will be.
As I passed in, feelin' more like war-whoopin' than like walkin' soft, she whispered three words at me that finished me up.
“It's a girl,” says she. “Walk light, and stay where you are, and when you can come in and see the girl, I'll bring her out and show her to you.”
I was clean idiotic with satisfaction. I sat down on the edge of a chair and twirled my hat until I couldn't sit still, and then got up and edged round the room lookin' at the pictures on the wall, for all the world like I was a visitor. I'd got half-way through lookin' at the things on the what-not, and was castin' my eye round for the photygraft album, when Mrs. Murphy stuck her blessed face into the parlor.