Once within the house, Martha returned to the subject of the carpet lifting and again he put her off; but this time her suspicion that all was not right had been aroused and, laying her hand upon his shoulder, she demanded in a tone sharpened by sudden anxiety:
"John Chester, what is the matter with you?"
He started, staggered by her touch, light as it was, and sank into a chair; then knowing that the truth must out sometime, almost hurled it at her—though smiling to think how little she would, at first, comprehend:
"Oh! nothing but 'ataxy locomotor.'"
"But—what? Don't tease. I'm in earnest, and a hurry."
"So am I. In deadly earnest. I'm afflicted with 'ataxy locomotor,' or locomotor ataxia. It's come to stay. To change our whole lives."
She hadn't the slightest idea what he meant, as he had surmised would be the case, but something in his tone frightened her, though she answered with a mirthful affectation:
"Humph! I'm glad it's something so respectable!"
Then she turned away, made ready to go to market, and soon left with her basket on her arm. But she carried a now heavy heart within her. She had seen that underneath her husband's jesting manner lay some tragic truth; and in her preoccupied state, she bought recklessly of things she should not and went home without those which were needful. So that once back there, she had to dispatch Dorothy marketward again, while she herself prepared the simple lunch that served till their evening dinner which all enjoyed the more in the leisure of the day's work done. And now, in the absence of the child they both so loved, husband and wife at length discussed the trouble that had befallen.
"Do you mean, John, that you are losing the use of your feet? What in the world will a postman do without his sound feet and as sound a pair of legs above them?" demanded the anxious housemistress, still unable to accept the dreadful fact.