“From what I could make out as we druv as fast as we could, Jim had been away from home over to the Duncan place from airly in the mornin’ till about five o’clock that afternoon. When he got home he run right up to Rhody’s room, an’ found her a-settin’ there with the baby in her arms, asleep he thought, but when he spoke to Rhody she began to scream, so that he was scared an’ tuk hold of the baby an’ it was dead.
“‘Then he hollered,’ said the old man, ‘an’ me an’ Mary Ann an’ Tom (that’s the hired man) ran up there, fur we was jes’ settin’ down to supper, an’ when we saw what it was Tom went for the doctor and I came for you.’
“An’ oh, Mis’ Johnson, I never want to see such sights agin! The baby was dead, sure enough, poor little thing, an’ out of its misery, but Rhody, she jes’ went out o’ one faint into another till the doctor came, an’ then we worked over her a long time, an’ when she quit faintin’ she was ravin’ in a high fever. Dangerous, the doctor said, an’ turned everybody but Jim an’ me out o’ the room. Such an awful time! Rhody would scream, ‘Oh, do come, Mother! Mother! Mother! Baby’s dyin’!’ till she couldn’t scream any more, an’ then she’d ask for the baby, an’ lie still, waitin’ like, an’ then scream again.
“It was midnight before the doctor got her quiet, and then she lay in a stupor like, with Jim settin’ watchin’ her. Then I thought of the pore baby an’ went to see about it, but some of the other neighbors hed come in, an’ I found they had it laid out nice in the parlor.
“Mis’ Curtis was settin’ by the kitchen stove, fur it was a cool evenin’, an’ I says to her, ‘Mary Ann,’ says I, ‘what ailed the child? It was tuk suddent, wasn’t it?’
“She looked at me. I knowed she was mad as well as feelin’ bad, but she didn’t want to show it then, an’ she says,
“‘Yes, I reckon you might say it was, ’though I never spected the child to live from the first. What’d Jim marry that no-’count spindly girl fur? He might ’a ’knowed.’