"'Ain't the little fellow a care to you, Cally?' he says then, wistful.
"She went over towards him, an' I see her pick up his pillow an' smooth it some an' make to fix it better.
"'Yes,' she says then, 'you're right. He is a care. An' he's your grandchild. You must take him with you just as soon as you're well enough,' she says.
"He broke clear down then, an' he caught her hands an' laid his face on 'em. She stood wonderful calm, lookin' down at him—an' lookin'. An' I laid the hollyhocks down on the rug or anywheres, an' somehow I got out o' the room an' down the stairs. An' I set there in the lower hall an' waited.
"She come herself in a minute. The big outside door was standin' open, an' when I heard her step on the stairs I went on ahead out to the porch, feelin' kind o' strange—like you will. But when Calliope come up to me she was just the same as she always was, an' I might 'a' known she would be. She isn't easy to understand—she's differ'nt—but when you once get to expectin' folks to be differ'nt, you can depend on 'em some that way, too.
"The moon was noon-high by then an' filterin' down through the leaves wonderful soft, an' things was still—I remember thinkin' it was like the hushin'-up before a bride comes in, but there wasn't any bride.
"When we come to our house—just as we begun to smell the savoury bed clear out there on the walk—we heard something ... a little bit of a noise that I couldn't put a name to, first. But, bless you, Calliope could. She stopped short by the gate an' stood lookin' acrost the road to the corner house where the New People lived. It was late for Friendship, but upstairs in that house a lamp was burnin'. An' that room was where the little noise come from—a little new cry.
"'Oh, Liddy,' Calliope says—her head up like she was singin'—'Oh, Liddy—the New People have got their little child.'
"An' I see, though of course she didn't anywheres near realize it then, that she was plantin' herself another cedar."