"I be so grieved about Mr. Edward. He was so full of life."
Hamlin took her hand.
"Thank you. The sympathy of all of you is much to me, more than you think." He paused adding slowly: "He may be fuller of life, Fancy, where he is now."
She went her way, strangely comforted. Her time was approaching. Soon she must remain at home, awaiting her ordeal. She confronted that with the courage which is so often the attribute of physically frail women. The month before the wonderful event would be happily occupied in making the layette or such of it as Mrs. Yellam couldn't provide; and Fancy had in mind the lining and trimming of a baby-basket fit for a tiny prince. She intended to embroider a broad blue riband with this legend: "To my little son." She made absolutely certain that the child would be a son. Already she had envisaged his life from the cradle to the grave. She wouldn't allow him to play too rough games, but he must be a Man; she shrank from what he would have to go through before he attained his sire's stature; she rehearsed a prayer suitable for babbling lips; she arrayed him in knickerbockers and despatched him to school, with many injunctions not to play truant, or pull the hair of small girls, or be pert to his teacher. Of course, he would be just such a son to her as Alfred was to his mother. She went so far in mental vagabondage as to choose a wife for him, a very practical young woman with a reassuring physique, quite unlike herself. Being his father's son, every inch of him, it was certain that he would have "affairs" with other young women before he chose the "One and Only." Fancy meant to deal faithfully with such flirtations. One of them would nearly capture the youth. He would be saved from a too audacious baggage by his mother! She hoped that he would not be too good, but full of fun, like Mr. Edward. He would be a carrier, because all wars would be over and done with after this war.
These were her day-dreams.
At night, she was not so happy. At night she thought much of Mrs. Yellam. That troubled face formed itself in the dark, mutely entreating comfort and counsel which Fancy could not evoke out of her eagerness to help a sorely-stricken creature.
Why did Mrs. Yellam borrow trouble?
Why did she believe that God had forsaken her? What a terrible notion this of Satan supreme and triumphant in Nether-Applewhite! But she had faith in God's mercy. He would lift this black cloud from a poor old woman's heart.
About two weeks after Edward Hamlin's death, unexpected balm, very precious spikenard, was poured upon Mrs. Yellam's lacerated feelings. William Saint had got his desire and leanness of soul withal. Alfred's good business was his. When he drove past the Yellam cottage, Mrs. Yellam turned her face from the window, if she happened to be there. She told Uncle that she discerned a mocking smile, a contemptuous upper lip, upon that hard, yellow face. Uncle nodded, saying nothing. But leaving his sister's house, he laid a couple of fingers upon his biceps as he contracted the muscles of it. He smiled genially. His biceps still swelled hard and big as a cricket ball. And only the day before he had been out running with the hounds. William Saint did not run. He walked to his objectives, the sort of tortoise, Uncle reflected, who wins prizes from the more nimble hare.
He was so pleasant with Jane that she suspected a frontal attack upon her money-box. Uncle, however, impetrated no loan. Later in the afternoon, when she went to the fowl-house to collect eggs, she surprised her lord and master, with his coat off, vigorously punching a sack of bran in the shed that adjoined the chicken-run.