"What I do on Sundays is more'n half your work too, Draxy," the Elder would make reply; and it was very true. Draxy's quicker brain and finer sense, and in some ways superior culture, were fast moulding the Elder's habits of thought and speech to an extent of which she never dreamed. Reuben's income was now far in advance of their simple wants, and newspapers, magazines, and new books continually found their way to the parsonage. Draxy had only to mention anything she desired to see, and Reuben forthwith ordered it. So that it insensibly came to pass that the daily life of the little household was really an intellectual one, and Elder Kinney's original and vigorous mind expanded fast in the congenial atmosphere. Yet he lost none of his old quaintness and simplicity of phrase, none of his fervor. The people listened to his sermons with wondering interest, and were not slow to ascribe some of the credit of the new unction to Draxy.
"Th' Elder's getting more'n more like Mis' Kinney every day o' his life," they said: "there's some o' her sayin's in every sermon he writes.
"And no wonder," would be added by some more enthusiastic worshipper of Draxy's. "I guess he's got sense enough to know that she's got more real book-learnin' in her head than he has, twice over. I shouldn't wonder if she got to writin' some of his sermons for him out'n out, before long."
Dear Draxy's reverent wifehood would have been grieved and dismayed if she had known that her efforts to second her husband's appeals to his people were sometimes so eloquent as to make the Elder's words forgotten. But she never dreamed of such a thing; she was too simple hearted and humble.
In the early days of the second winter came the Angel of the Annunciation, bearing a white lily to Draxy. Her joy and gratitude were unspeakable, and the exquisite purity and elevation of her nature shone out transcendent in the new experience.
"Now I begin to feel surer that God really trusts me," she said, "since he is going to let me have a child of my own."
"O my dear friends!" she exclaimed more than once to mothers, "I never dreamed how happy you were. I thought I knew, but I did not."
Draxy's spontaneous and unreserved joy of motherhood, while yet her babe was unborn, was a novel and startling thing to the women among whom she lived. The false notions on this point, grown out of ignorant and base thoughts, are too wide-spread, too firm-rooted, to be overthrown in an hour or a day, even by the presence of angelic truth incarnate. Some of Draxy's best friends were annoyed and disquieted by her frankness and unreserve of delight. But as the weeks went on, the true instinct of complete motherhood thrilled for the first time in many a mother's heart, under Draxy's glowing words, and women talked tearfully one with another, in secret, with lowered voices, about the new revelation which had come to them through her.
"I've come to see it all quite different, since I've talked with Mis' Kinney," said one young married woman, holding her baby close to her breast, and looking down with remorseful tenderness on its placid little face. "I shan't never feel that I've quite made it up to Benjy, never, for the thoughts I had about him before he was born. I don't see why nobody ever told us before, that we was just as much mothers to 'em from the very first as we ever could be," and tears dropped on Benjy's face; "an' I jest hope the Lord'll send me's many more's we can manage to feed'n clothe, 'n I'll see if lovin' 'em right along from the beginnin', with all my heart, 'll make 'em beautiful an' happy an' strong an' well, 's Mis' Kinney sez. I b'lieve it's much's ef 'twas in the Bible, after all she told me, and read me out of a Physiology, an' it stands to natur', which's more'n the old way o' talkin did."
This new, strong current of the divinest of truths, stirred the very veins of the village. Mothers were more loving and fathers more tender, and maidens were sweeter and graver--all for the coming of this one little babe into the bosom of full and inspired motherhood.