Truly, Molly was softening. Sandy could hardly credit his own happiness. He ran his fingers through the tawny fringe of his beard awhile before he answered.
"Thet's all right, Molly. I laid out to be good to ye, an' I've tried to be. Say, Molly," he continued, with a kind of pleading earnestness in his voice, "ye've done hankerin' arter the city, ain't ye? Kind o' gittin' used to the mountings ag'in, ain't ye, Molly?"
It was quite dark on the little hillside now, and Molly could turn her face boldly toward her husband.
"What makes ye keep a-harpin' on that, Sandy? I ain't hankered after the city—not for a long time," and a slight shudder ran over her. "Just put that idea out of your head, Sandy. Nothin' could ever tempt me to go to the city again. I hate it!"
She spoke with fierce emphasis, and rose to go in. Sandy, somewhat puzzled by her manner, but re-assured by her words, heaved a sigh and rose also.
The stars were out, and from a little patch of swamp at the foot of the hill came the shrill piping of innumerable frogs, and a whip-poor-will's wild, sad cry pierced the silence. The baby had long since fallen asleep. The mother laid him in his cradle, and night and rest settled down over the little cabin.
Spring had brightened into summer, and summer was already on the wane; an August morning had dawned over the mountains. Although the sun shone warmly down upon the dew-drenched earth, the air was still deliciously cool and fresh.
Molly stood in the door-way, holding in her arms the baby, whose look of preternatural wisdom had merged itself into one of infantile softness and benignity. She was holding him up for the benefit of Sandy, who, as he went down the red, dusty road, driving the white cow before him, turned now and then to bestow a grimace upon his son and heir. That small personage's existence, while perhaps less a matter of astonishment to his father than formerly, had lost none of the charms of novelty. He was a fine, robust little man, and cooed and chuckled rapturously in his mother's arms, stretching out his hands toward the scarlet blossoms of the trumpet-vine which climbed around the door-way. Mother and child made a fair picture in the twining green frame touched up with flame-like clusters of bloom—a picture which was not lost upon Sandy, who, as he passed out of sight of the cabin, shook his head, and said to himself again, as he had many and many a time before: