A section-man watching her thought her deranged, but Mary knew that she was just beginning to see clearly. She had learned that the laws relating to a woman’s property were not framed to be beyond a woman’s understanding, and the men hadn’t seemed to consider her out of her place. A hot wave went over her when she thought of her ignorance of the simplest parts of the procedure. They had been very kind about it, but some arrangement must be made to teach these things to Jean, and save her the agony of such embarrassment.
So it seems we have one of the great motive forces of human evolution—the ambition of individuals here and there to give their children the things they have missed themselves.
The days after this were filled with a mother’s provident setting of her house in order. Piles of
little garments took shape and received their distinguishing hand touches of smocking and embroidery in the cold, weary hours when everyone else was sleeping. When she smoothed them out the soft nap caught on her roughened hands like the clutch of something frail and clinging—something that needed her, and she prayed for life desperately, as though the waters were already covering her.
Then, one day in late November, when Dan had gone on an indefinite itinerary selling incubators, and Billy was trying to harvest the turnip crop, the dinner-bell called over the fields again. Something in the short, quick ring told him the call was urgent, but when he reached the house he could only stare with growing terror. His mother’s face and hair were wet with perspiration; her mouth was set hard and white at the edges; her eyes were bright like stars—full of suffering that could not be hidden even from the child. She was sorting through a basket of white stuff and as usual she stopped to reassure him.
“It’s all right, Boy. Just take the colt and run and tell Auntie Brown to come.”
Through all the hard things that had tried the boy’s courage and robbed him of the irresponsibility of childhood, he had never known what real fear was before. It seemed to make his limbs and voice powerless to urge the colt to his hardest run. Only one thing was clear to him—his
mother might die, and she was alone. It was miles farther to the doctor’s, but if only Auntie Brown were there! She was as good as a doctor, everyone said, and she was the only physician many of them knew.
Mrs. Brown saw him coming and opened the door before he stopped. She didn’t ask him what he came for. She just said she would go right down, and told him to go for the doctor, then called after him to ask if his father was at home, or when he was coming, but Billy didn’t answer. Already he was floating down the road on the horse’s neck. He might have told her, he reflected, that they didn’t know when his father was coming home; his trip had been delayed because he had to stay around until Nell’s colt came, but there was no time for gossiping now. Anyway, he couldn’t see why anyone should be concerned about where his father was at such a time as this.
The doctor wasn’t at home. His wife said she would telephone and send him right down from another case but to the boy, remembering the look in his mother’s eyes when he left her, it seemed as though the fates in general had conspired against him. When he reached home with his lathered, limping colt, the doctor hadn’t arrived yet and Mrs. Brown was worried. She wouldn’t let him see his mother, but she lifted the corner of a shawl from a white flannel bundle