"Oh, Jonas!" she cried, "is it naught to you that baby is so ill?
You surely don't want him to die?"
He turned fiercely on her, his face hard and gray, and his teeth shining—
"What makes you say that—you?"
"Oh, nothin', Jonas, only you don't seem to care a bit about baby, and rather to have a delight in his bein' so ill."
"He's better, you say?"
"Yes—I really do think it."
There was an unpleasant expression in his face that frightened her.
Was it the eye of Jonas that had blighted the child? But no—Karon
Boxall had said that it was ill-wished by a woman. Jonas left the
room, ascended the stairs, and strode about in the chamber overhead.
Swaying in her chair, holding the infant to her heart, the sole heart that loved it, but loved it with a love ineffable, she heard her husband open the window, and then hastily shut it again. Then there was a pause in his movement overhead, and he came shortly after down the stairs. He held a phial in his hand—and without looking at Mehetabel, thrust it towards her, with the curt injunction, "Take."
"Perhaps," said the young mother, "as my darling is better, I need not give him the medicine."
"That's just like your ways," exclaimed the Broom-Squire, savagely. "Fust I get no rest till I promise to go to the doctor, and then when I've put myself about to go, and bring the bottle as has cost me half-a-crown, you won't have it."