“Tisn’ nothin’ to me; Ned don’t care for me no more.”
Something inexpressibly cheerless in the tone of her voice, and uncannily searching in her dark gaze, disturbed Bowden.
“Cheer up!” he murmured; “yu’m got a monstrous baby there, all to yureself.”
Going up to the bed, he clucked his tongue, and held his finger out to the baby. He did it softly and with a sort of native aptitude.
“He’m a proper little man.” Then he took up the letter, for there ‘wasn’t,’ he felt, ‘no yuse in leavin’ it there against Ned if an’ in case he should change his mind when he came safe ’ome.’ But as he went out he saw the girl Pansy put the baby to her breast, and again he felt that disturbance, as of pity. With a nod to the village widow, who was sitting on an empty grocery box reading an old paper by the light coming through half a skylight, Bowden descended the twisting stairs to the kitchen. His mother was seated where the sunlight fell, her bright little dark eyes moving among their mass of wrinkles. Bowden stood a moment watching her.
“Well, Granny,” he said, “yu’m a great-granny now.”
The old lady nodded, mumbled her lips a little in a smile, and rubbed one hand on the other. Bowden experienced a shock.
“There ain’t no sense in et all,” he muttered to himself, without knowing too well what he meant.
VIII
Bowden did not attend when three weeks later the baby was christened Edward Bowden. He spent the June morning in his cart with a bull-calf, taking it to market. The cart did not run well, because the weight of the calf made it jerk and dip. Besides, though used to it all his life, he had never become quite case-hardened to separating calves from their mothers. Bowden had a queer feeling for cattle, more feeling indeed than he had for human beings. He always sat sulky when there was a little red beast tied up and swaying there behind him. Somehow he felt for it, as if in some previous existence he might himself have been a red bull-calf.