"She looks fine and healthy, glory be to God!" said John.
"It's a girl, they tell me."
"It is."
"Do you know yet what you'll call her?"
"We'll name her Kathleen, after her mother," said John.
"Then you'll be calling her Kitty, like her mother, I suppose."
"No—no," John answered, slowly; "I don't think I'll call her that. The child will be always Kathleen. I dunno if I can tell you how I feel about that. It was a name for a child, more than a woman—Kitty—and yet, now that she's gone from me, I've a feeling like it was something more than the name of a woman—like it was something holy, like the name of the blessed Mother of God. When I think of that name now, I want to think only of her, and I wouldn't like to be calling even her own child by it. It's Kathleen I'll call her—nothing else."
"You're right about all that, no doubt," said Peter; "but I can't be staying here, and Ellen and the child at home the way they are. You have your child left, and you say it's healthy—thank God for that same!—but it looks like I might have neither wife nor child."
"Don't say that, man alive," said John; "what's the matter at all then?"
"I can't stop discoursin' here," Peter answered. "I came to ask would your mother, being a knowledgable woman, step over for a bit and see can she tell at all what's the matter with Ellen and the child. There was a doctor there, but he seemed to do no good, and Ellen said your mother would know more than all the doctors, so I came to ask would she come. And if you care to come yourself, I'll be telling you how they are as we go along, but I can't stay here; it's too long to be away from them."