danger of death, any person who knows how can baptize it.”
She said no more, but, after distributing some little presents to the children, as her custom was, and sitting by the baby a few minutes, went home. The mother was very pale. She sat looking at her child, and seemed indisposed to speak. There was even a sort of coldness in her manner when she took leave of her visitor.
The children went out, and looked after the lady as long as they could see her, then gathered in a whispering group about the door. They felt, rather than knew, the impending sorrow. Joe went, stool in hand, and sat down by his wife. Her lips began to tremble. She was only a woman, poor soul! and wanted comfort, not only for the grief before her, but for the new and terrible fear that had risen up in her heart while Edith Yorke spoke.
“Joe,” she said unsteadily, “that girl is very learned. Dr. Martin can’t equal her. She makes everything awfully clear. She leaves no hole for you to crawl out. If baptism isn’t what she says, then there isn’t any sense in baptism.”
“Yes,” sighed Joe, “she’s a mighty smart gal.”
“Then,” the mother whispered sharply, “if what she says is true, what’s become of our other children, Joe?”
He looked up with startled eyes. He had been thinking of their present sorrow, not of the past. It is only the mother who for ever carries her children in her heart.
“There are three children gone, Joe,” she said imploringly.
He dropped his eyes, and considered anxiously, not so much the fate of his lost children as the fact that Sally looked to him for help. A shallow head goes with a shallow
heart, and his first thought was merely how he should evade the weight of his wife’s dependence.