"Listen to me, Nettie dear. I want you to know that I know what it means to be as you are." Her voice dropped to a wistful whisper. "Eight times, dear, just think of that. You know we pioneered in the early days. We didn't always have a grand place like this, and—and—well, in those days the distances were so great. We were so far from everything—it was just as if we were on the end of the world, and we didn't have the conveniences, or even vehicles to carry us places, and the doctors always came too late, or not at all. I lost all of my babies. They just came into the world to—to go out again; but I always thought that even the weakest of them had not lived in vain, because you see, they brought something lovely into my life. It was just as if—as if—an angel's wing had touched me, don't you see? It brought to me a knowledge of Love—love eternal and everlasting. No woman who bears a child can fail to feel it."
She broke off, in strange, breathless, smiling pause, as if she sought to conquer her present pain with the elusive joy that she believed had come with her dead children into her life. "So you see, Nettie, I don't hold anything against any woman who bears a child, no matter how or where. It doesn't matter what you or Cyril have done. I have great faith in that boy, and I feel he will make it right."
"Mrs. Langdon," said Nettie in a suffocating voice, "I ask you not to believe that he is to blame for anything wrong about me."
"I won't, then. I'll believe the best of you both. We are going to be very happy, all of us. Just think, you are going to be a mother! It's the sublimest feeling in life. I know it, because all my life I've heard baby voices in my ears and in my heart, Nettie, and my arms have ached and yearned to press a little baby to my breast. My own dear little ones have passed, but, Nettie, I'll hold yours, won't I, dear?"
"Oh, Mrs. Langdon, when you talk like that, I feel just as if something was bursting all up inside me. I don't know what to do."
"Do nothing, dear; but look out at God's beautiful world. Lift your eyes to the skies, to the sun, to the hills' hills!"
"There's no sun no more," said Nettie. "The days are all dark and cold now, and the hills are all froze, too. They're like me, Mrs. Langdon. I'm all froze up inside."
"Oh, but you'll change now. Look, Nettie, it won't be long before they'll be back—my husband and your Cyril. I had a letter. Where is it, now? I put it in my book—no, under my pillow. See, what they write." The paper fluttered in her hand, and she looked up to smile at Nettie. "It was thoughtful of Bill, wasn't it, to have the letter typed? You know he hates to write letters. Poor fellow hasn't much of an education—You know, Nettie, he came to the school when I was teaching, to learn. It was pathetic, really it was. But now, he's had some stenographer write to tell me that they'll be home in a couple of weeks. They should have been home two months ago, but they've had a terrible time of it in the States. You see there's a kind of sickness over there—a plague that's running around. It's all over Europe and now the States. People, he writes, are afraid to go to public places, and everything is closed up. It's a great disappointment for him, poor fellow. He expected so much from the Prince, and he's hung on from week to week, and been through all sorts of aggravating times. You know they even quarantined his herd on a false suspicion of disease, when they were in perfect health. But, never mind, we have to have disappointments in life. All I'm thankful for now is that he's coming back—he and Cyril."
Nettie said in a low voice: