The rest of the group trailed behind with antic.i.p.atory grins.

Master John Hunter lay on the bed, very wide awake, making sputtering efforts to devour his thumb, while he kicked his little feet as vigorously as the confines of the pinning-blanket would allow.

Silas chuckled. Hearing a noise at the door, the heir of the house rolled his head on his pillow till his mother's face came within the range of his vision. Her absence that day had made the child more than usually eager for her presence. The little feet kicked more wildly than ever, and forgetting the generous slice of thumb still to be devoured, he grinned such a vast and expansive grin that the hand to which the thumb was attached, being free, joined the other in waving salutations of such joyful pantomime that the object of his industrious beckonings, completely carried into the current, rushed at him and, sweeping him up in her arms, tossed him on high as gleefully as if she had not been weighed down by care but a moment before the old man's advent into the room.

"There, Mr. Chamberlain, was there ever another like him?" she cried.

Baby, who had come down from a point as high as his mother's arms could reach, doubled his fat little body together with a smothered, squeezed off little gurgle of delight. Silas was aquiver with sympathetic glee. Those were not the days when babies were raised by scientific rules, and Silas caught the child from its mother's arms and repeated the tossing process, while the baby shouted and struggled. At last the three, followed by the family, retired to convenient chairs about the sitting-room fire.

"Now, Jack Horner, you can pare that thumb down a leetle more if you want t'. You've swallowed enough wind to give you the colic for a day or two,"

Silas said when the child began to hiccough.

Elizabeth clapped her hands delightedly.

"You have named the baby!" she exclaimed.

"How's that?" Silas asked.

"Oh, John can't bear to have him called Johnnie, and John is too awfully old for him now. Little Jack Horner--no, Little Jack Hunter. I'm so glad!

I just do love it; and we had called him Baby till I was afraid we'd never quit it," Elizabeth said.

They kept the old man as long as they could induce him to stay, and when he did go home it was with the settled conviction that he had been wanted.

He described the visit enthusiastically to Liza Ann and tried to induce her to go over to see Elizabeth the next Sunday. Silas craved the privilege of that baby's presence.

"I know, Si," his wife replied, "but she could come here if she wanted to.

It's her fool notions. John was th' greatest hand t' go you ever saw till he married her, an' now he don't go nowhere, an' when I asked him about it, he said she wasn't well! She's as well as any woman that's nursin', an' she's got his mother t' help 'er too."

"Well, I don't pretend t' know th' why's an' th' wherefores of it, but I do know there ain't a stuck-up bone in 'er body--I don't care what n.o.body says," loyal Silas Chamberlain replied.

The new mood stayed with Elizabeth Hunter and called for much perplexed introspection. It had been a perplexing day. There was no reason that she could a.s.sign for her contradictory actions. She found herself even softened toward John and able to enter into his attempt to be sociable after Silas's departure. He seemed to be anxious to set himself before her in a kindlier light and she was able to meet the attempt as he wished.

Elizabeth lost faith in herself as she saw her apparent whimsicalness and began to lash herself into line as John and his mother wished. She asked no more to be taken places.

In May, Luther came to help John with his team, and for the first time in months Elizabeth saw a neighbour woman. Luther lifted Sadie down from the high seat with as much care as if she had been a child.

"Sadie's lonesome at the house alone all day, an' it was good of you, Lizzie, t' ask 'er," he said as he climbed back into the wagon.

Elizabeth wanted a visit with Luther, himself, but was less fearful of a day with Sadie than she had been. She took her guest into the house and at the sitting-room door paused to point to Master Jack, who sat on an old quilt with a pillow at his back, digging his little heels into the floor and holding out dimpled hands imploringly.

"You darling child!" Sadie cried, going down on her knees at his side and hugging him till he sent up an indignant howl. "Isn't he cunnin'? Isn't he?" she cried, releasing him and subsiding into a doubled figure by his side. "Honestly, Lizzie, why don't you bring him over?"

She looked so insistent, that she had to be answered.

"I don't go any place, Sadie," Elizabeth answered truthfully.

"Is it so, that Mr. Hunter won't take you?" Sadie asked, and then at sight of the anger in Elizabeth's face rose to her knees and laid her hand on her arm hastily. "I didn't say that to hurt; honestly, Lizzie, I didn't.

I'm trying not to do that this time."

Elizabeth's indignation was cooled slightly by the genuineness of the speech, but she did not understand the last sentence till her eye happened to fall on Sadie's form. In a flash she saw what was meant. Forgetting her hurt, she was silent from pure delight. She knew what a child would mean in that home. The other misunderstood her silence and hastened on with her apologies:

"Honest, Lizzie, I didn't want to hurt, but they do say such mean things about it that I want you t' know. Why don't you ever take Mrs. Hunter and th' baby and go t' meetin'?"

Elizabeth's face went white as she realized that she must continue to answer since she had begun.

"I don't care in the least what they say, Sadie, and I don't want you ever to mention this to me again," she said sternly.

Sadie's face worked in silent misery till she could control her voice.

"You won't be mad at me, Lizzie? I told Luther I wouldn't be mean t'

n.o.body till _it_ was born," she said with quivering lip.

Elizabeth took some seconds to consider the thing that had been told to her. It was of far more importance than the gossip Sadie had just hinted at, but the gossip must be answered first.

"I won't be mad at you at all," she said after a moment. "That is, I won't if I never have to listen to such things again. I don't care in the least, if I don't have to hear it. Don't ever come to me again with anything that anybody says. Now, then, tell me about yourself. I half believe you're glad of it."

"Glad?" Sadie told her secret, which could be a secret no more. Luther had wanted the child, and she had come to the point of wanting it for his sake, and the sight of chubby Jack Hunter had aroused the latent mother love in her till, as she talked, her eyes shone with the brightness of imaginative maternity. She implored Elizabeth to come to her aid when the day of her labour arrived in September, and rambled along telling of their preparations for its coming, and little home incidents, disclosing a home life of so sweet a character that if Elizabeth Hunter had not been sincere and utterly without jealousy she would have drawn the discussion to a close.

The incident had a peculiar effect upon Elizabeth. She began really to like Sadie, and all her old desire for harmony in the home welled up in her anew. The old att.i.tude of self-blame was a.s.sumed also. Here was Sadie Crane, the most spiteful girl that had ever been raised on these prairies, able to command the love and respect of the man she had married, to do things because her husband desired them, even so difficult a thing as the bearing of children, and she, Elizabeth, had failed to accomplish any of these things. There was a renewed resolve to be more patient. Elizabeth hated sulking, and the remembrance of the day when she had gone to sign the mortgage and had been unable to respond to John's good-humoured willingness to get abundant supplies because she saw the money going out so fast was fixed in her mind with new significance. Here was Sadie doing the things that her husband wished of her and obtaining not only his love but her own self-respect, while she, Elizabeth, was able to command neither. Instead of reasoning upon the differences between the two husbands, Elizabeth reasoned on the differences between her own actions and those of Sadie, and from the results of that reasoning entered upon a period of self-denial and abject devotion to the man of her choice. John Hunter accepted this new devotion with satisfied serenity, and, not being obstructed in any of his little exactions, became more cheerful and agreeable to live with. This added to Elizabeth's conviction that the difficulty had been somewhat within herself. She ceased to ask for the things which caused friction, and there was a season of comparative peace.

In July, however, a new phase of the old difficulty arose. Nathan and Susan Hornby were driving past the Hunter house one Sunday afternoon.

Elizabeth saw them and with a glad little shout ran to the road to greet them.

Susan Hornby's delight was fully equal to her own. The two persuaded Nathan to wait till Aunt Susan should have time to go into the house and see the baby. Nathan would not go in, but sat waiting in offended aloofness in the wagon.

"Why don't you come to see me, Elizabeth?" Aunt Susan whispered as they went back to the wagon. "He's always loved you so, but he thinks--well, he's always been so good to me about everything else, but his feelings are awfully hurt about you. Can't you come soon?" She looked into the girl's face with such a wealth of pent-up love that Elizabeth answered positively:

"I will come next Sunday, Aunt Susan. You may look for us, for we'll be there."

The glad look in Susan Hornby's eyes was a sad reproach to the younger woman, and though Elizabeth wondered how she would get her husband's consent, she made up her mind to force him by every means in her power to comply. All through the week she had it upon her mind, but Elizabeth had learned not to open a discussion till the necessity of action was upon her, and it was not till Sunday morning that she mentioned the visit to John.

Nothing but the pleading in Susan Hornby's face could have induced Elizabeth to ask to be taken to see her at this time, but the troubled whispering of Aunt Susan about this visit had awakened Elizabeth to the tragedy of her neglect. Susan Hornby had never before whispered where Nathan was concerned before. Elizabeth at last saw the loneliness of the old couple. It would never do to continue such treatment of those who had befriended her when she was in need.

Jack was fretful that Sunday morning and John walked the floor with him while Elizabeth finished her breakfast dishes. The breakfast had been late and it was time to get ready if they were to go. Her heart sank as she approached the subject. Jack had not slept well of late. He was not ill, but teething. Always a light sleeper, Elizabeth had kept the fact of his indisposition to herself, hoping that John, who slept soundly, might not be aware of it, but the baby had fretted in the daytime and was now tossing restlessly in his father's arms. Elizabeth was worn out from the loss of sleep and was half afraid to trust herself to make the request, because it would require politic treatment to get John in the mood. If she became vexed or upset by his opposition she would lose her opportunity.

Elizabeth was weaker than John when her feelings were ruffled. She had planned and waited till the last moment, afraid of herself and afraid of her husband. She looked at him as he paced back and forth, back and forth, with a torrent of longing swelling up in her and threatening to bring her tears. She must find a way to get his ear.

"Let me take Jack," she said, hoping that something in the conversation would give her a natural opening for what must come.

"Poor little chap," John replied, releasing the child.

Elizabeth was bathed in perspiration from the hurry of having late breakfast and the fact that she would never dare to ask to be taken before all the work was done and the kitchen ready for close inspection, and she thought indignantly of the scrubbed floors of yesterday and wondered how the child could be expected to be well when he was fed on overheated milk day after day. Instantly she put the thought away from her. She must be cool and careful if she were to get to Aunt Susan's to-day.

"I'll sponge him off with soda in his bath and he'll be all right. I told Aunt Susan we'd take dinner with them to-day, and it's nearly half-past ten now. They have dinner at noon on Sunday as well as other days; so run and hitch up, and I'll be ready with baby. I'll have your things laid out so you can jump right into them when you come in."

She looked down at the baby so as not to meet his eye, but the offhand a.s.sumption of his readiness to go seemed to her to be encouraging.

"With that child?" was the astonished exclamation.

"It won't hurt him as much as for me to stand over the stove and cook a dinner at home," Elizabeth answered firmly, "and, besides, John, I promised Aunt Susan we'd come. Now don't be cross. I've got to go, and that's all there is about it."

John Hunter was actually astonished now. He had started out with his usual pretenses, but this was something new. Elizabeth had promised without consulting him! What was happening?