"Oh...." Jenny said. "Mary! How wonderful for you! Why, it's almost next as wonderful as mine!"
Mary hesitated for a breath. But she was profoundly stirred by what Jenny had told her—the first time, so far as she could recall, that news like this had ever come to her directly, as a secret and a marvel. News of the village births usually came in gossip, in commiseration, in suspicion. Falling as did this confidence in a time when she was re-living her old hope, when Adam's boy stood outside her threshold, the moment quite suddenly put on its real significance.
"We can plan together," Jenny was saying. "Ain't it wonderful?"
"Ain't it?" Mary said then, simply, and kissed Jenny, when Jenny came and kissed her. Then Jenny went away.
Mary went on to the barn, and opened the door, and listened. She had brought no lantern, but the soft stillness within needed no vigilance. The hay smell from the loft and the mangers, the even breath of the cows, the quiet safety of the place, met her. She was wondering at herself, but she was struggling not at all. It was as if concerning the little boy, something had decided for her, in a soft, fierce rush of feeling not her own. She had committed herself to Jenny almost without will. But Mary felt no exultation, and the weight within her did not lift.
"I really couldn't do anything else but take him, I s'pose," she thought. "I wonder what'll come on me next?"
All the while, she was conscious of the raw smell of the clover in the hay of the mangers, as if something of Summer were there in the cold.