"Luther, could you get Hepsie back for me, if you told her Mother Hunter was gone and would not come back?" she asked, falling back into a whisper from sheer weakness.

Luther bent to catch her words. Elizabeth's illness showed plainly in her pinched face this morning; he would have done anything she asked of him.

"Of course," he answered cheerfully.

Luther really did not know whether Hepsie could be had, but he meant to have her if she was not already at work somewhere else. He listened to the directions and promised without equivocation that Hepsie would come. He understood that for some reason the thing Elizabeth asked of him she could ask of him alone, but was careful to couch his replies so that that fact was not indicated even to her.

When it was arranged, Elizabeth closed her weary eyes as a sign that she wished to be alone, and the men retired from the room, leaving her in the first real peace she had known since her illness began. With Hepsie in the house, she could look forward to the days to come with less dismay. She resolved that if she did get the girl back that she would keep her as long as there were hired men to cook for. With the a.s.surance that Hugh would keep John from falling into debt again there would be funds to pay her and there was as much need of a girl in the kitchen as of men in the field.

Hepsie came gladly. She had always liked Elizabeth, and the well-furnished Hunter house, with the equally well-furnished pantry, was desirable.

Elizabeth's life was in grave danger and when John at last grasped the fact he looked after her needs rigorously. He tiptoed about the house, looking to it personally that no discomfort a.s.sailed the wan patient. Jack learned the note of authority in his father's voice, and incidentally the weight of his hand also, and quiet prevailed. John reflected the mood of the sick room in every step he took. Much of the time Elizabeth was too ill to observe John's changed att.i.tude, but the second week she began to awake to things about her. She went over the situation again and again.

Something had to be done. Things had promised to straighten out since Hugh's coming, but the very day of his first absence the old coercion was renewed. John would not have brought the cream jar up without asking if Hugh had been there, or if he had done so she could have mentioned the inconvenience of its presence before Hugh and got it carried back to the cellar. The importance of Hugh's presence loomed up before Elizabeth as she lay considering her situation; Hugh was her only hope for better conditions. She had accepted Hugh as a happy feature of the family life and of the business, but she had not thought of him as a factor in her personal affairs.

There was another feature of the weariness which came from being pushed beyond the amount of work she was momentarily able to do: she became irritable with Jack when tired, and then John interfered. Here again, her only hope lay in Hugh. With Hugh present John was suave, polite, and apt to treat her as a man is supposed to treat his wife. Considering all these things, Elizabeth began to look forward to Hugh's return eagerly.

As if to favour Elizabeth's plans, Hugh Noland found Mitch.e.l.l County a lonely place to stay and as soon as the fencing was finished put a man in charge and returned with all possible speed.

"Oh, John, you brother!" he exclaimed when he met John Hunter at the kitchen door the day he arrived. He held out both his hands. "I haven't had such a sense of coming _home_ since my mother's death."

They greeted, and looked at each other long and earnestly, and John Hunter allowed himself to enter into closer relations of friendship and love than he had ever done in the twenty-seven years of his life.

"I'm glad you're here," John said when he had recovered from his surprise over this unusual demonstration of affection. "We're going to lift Elizabeth out into a chair for the first time to-day. She'll be glad you've come too."

"How is she? You didn't say much about her in your last letter."

"Wasn't much to say," John replied. "She's better--that's the main thing.

Come on into the sitting-room till I can get her ready and get a quilt in the rocking chair."

"Got a girl, I see!" Hugh remarked in a whisper as they closed the door behind them.

"Yes, and a good one fortunately. Too much milk and b.u.t.ter. I found that out when I got at it. No more b.u.t.termaking in mine. I had the whole thing on my hands for over a week. I turned half those cows out to gra.s.s," John said, bringing forward the chair for the invalid.

"I was afraid the morning I left that she had too much to do with all those sh.e.l.lers on such short notice."

Hugh stooped to pick up the baby.

"How are you, partner?" he cried, swinging the delighted child up to the ceiling. Jack was wild with joy. Hugh stood with legs wide apart and cuddled the baby to him for a squeeze. This was part of the homecoming too. He was still hugging Jack tenderly when John beckoned from the bedroom door.

Hugh drew the rocking chair into the bedroom and then stopped to stare at the wasted figure wrapped in a quilt who had to be supported while he adjusted it.

"John! You didn't tell me she was like this!"

He took the thin hands in his, both of them, just as he had done John's a moment before, and was moved almost to tears by the pallid face.

Elizabeth's brown eyes had fallen back into her bony, sharp-lined head, and her nose was thin and drawn.

"Words fail me, Mrs. Hunter," he said feelingly.

But though words failed to express Hugh Noland's sympathy his eyes did not, and the girl, who had not had an hour's sympathetic companionship since he had been gone, caught the fact and was cheered by it.

Hugh Noland was vital and invigorating. Elizabeth listened to his account of the adventures in Mitch.e.l.l County. He was a good story-teller and his incidents were well selected. She was too weak to sit up a whole hour and was carried tenderly back to her bed, where the family life centred now that she was becoming able to stand the noise and confusion of it.

During the days which followed, Hugh, at John's suggestion, brought his books and read aloud to them in that little bedroom in the warm spring evenings, and life in the Hunter house took on a brighter complexion than it had ever before a.s.sumed.

John, who had been sleeping in Hugh's room since Elizabeth's serious illness, returned to his own bed. He looked about him for Jack the first night and asked where he was.

"I sent him up to Hepsie's room," Elizabeth said quietly.

"To sleep!"

"Yes."

"The children in the Hunter family are not put into the servants' beds,"

John Hunter replied. The unexplained statement was offensive to a man accustomed to being consulted.

To punish her John went to sleep without giving her the usual good-night kiss.

"He'd have been cross, anyhow," was all the thought she gave that part of the circ.u.mstance. Could John Hunter have known that the absence of that kiss was a relief, and that he made of his presence sometimes an intolerable nightmare, he might have saved for himself a corner in her tired heart against the days to come. John's zeal and pa.s.sion had gone into the pursuit of their courtship days. Now they were married, possession was a fact: Elizabeth was his wife.

Elizabeth understood that John was whimsical and tyrannical, but not intentionally evil, but in spite of the fact that she had John's character summed up and understood that much that he did was not deliberately intended to do her injury, that little of it was in fact, she felt a growing disinclination for his presence. The unloved, undesired child which she had lost was a warning guidepost pointing its finger away from a continuance of marital relations. No conditions could make it right for her to have another child till love again existed between them. She saw that nothing could excuse or make decent the child of wornout conditions; nothing but affection made marriage worthy, and when that affection had departed from a man and woman, to thrust life upon a child was a crime against that child, a crime against nature and a crime against themselves and society; yet, what could she do? Her health was broken, and she without means of support. After Aunt Susan's death the girl had seriously considered separation; she still considered it, but not seriously. Though she cried "Fool! fool!" many times, she had given her youth, her health, her strength to John Hunter, and her wages--food and clothing--she must accept.

CHAPTER XX

THE CREAM-JARS OF HER LIFE

While Elizabeth progressed toward health the work on the Hunter farm progressed also. Because of taking the cattle to Mitch.e.l.l County it was possible to get in a greater acreage of small grain and corn. Patsie had a small colt at her side, as did her mate also, and there was an extra man needed in the field most of the time, but after repeated consultations it was decided that by using care the teams they had would be able to plow the corn, and that they could hire help for the harvesting cheaper than they could buy another pair of horses.

However, in spite of the discussions which were supposed to have settled the matter, John came home from Colebyville one Sat.u.r.day with a new team.

"What do you think of them?" he asked Hugh, who opened the gate to let him into the barnyard. "I just made up my mind that it wasn't economy to push the horses we had so hard. I got them at a bargain."

"You've bought them, you say?"

"Yes," was the brief answer.

"I'd take them back," Hugh said slowly but decidedly. "Horses and dogs talk with their tails, and I don't like the way this one acts."

"I can't take them back. I got them from a mover. I got them for a song, and we're going to need them for the binder. I know what we said," he went on, interrupting Hugh, who was trying to speak, "but there was a bargain in them and we do need them."

"But we haven't the money! How did you buy them? You couldn't pay for them outright."

Hugh Noland had been feeling his way down the foreleg of the horse nearest him. The animal was nervous and had crowded over against its mate in an endeavour to get away. Both its ears were laid back, and there was a half-threatening air about its movements. As Hugh straightened up to continue the discussion of finances, it jumped aside, quivering with fright.

"I gave a check on the bank," John replied uneasily. Hugh had never criticised him before.