During this talk Jane Hemingway had gone out to the fence to speak to Dr. Evans, who had passed along the road, a side of bacon on his left shoulder, and she came back, and with a low groan sat down. Sam Hemingway, who sat near the fire, shrugged his shoulders and sniffed. "You are making too much of a hullabaloo over it," he said. "I’ve been thinking about the matter a lots, and I’ve come to the final conclusion that you are going it entirely too heavy, considering the balance of us. Every man, woman, and child, born and unborn, is predestinated to die, and them that meet their fate graceful-like are the right sort. Seeing you takin’ on after them doctors left actually turned _me_ sick at the stomach, and that ain’t right. I’ll be sick enough when my own time comes, I reckon, without having to go through separate spells for all my kin by marriage every time they have a little eruption break out on them. Then here’s Virginia having her bright young life blighted when it ought to be all sunshine and roses, if I may be allowed to quote the poets. I’ll bet when you was a young girl your cheeks wasn’t kept wet as a dish-rag by a complaining mother. No, what you’ve got to do, Sister Jane, is to pucker up courage and face the music—be resigned." "Resigned! I say, resigned!" was the rebellious reply—"I say, resigned! with a slow thing like this eating away at my vitals and nothing under high heaven to make it let go. You can talk, sitting there with a pipe in your mouth, and every limb sound, and a long life ahead of you." "But you are openly disobeying Biblical injunction," said Sam, knocking his exhausted pipe on the heel of his shoe. "You are kicking agin the pricks. All of us have to die, and you are raising a racket because your turn is somewhere in sight. You are kicking agin something that’s as natural as a child coming into the world. Besides, you are going back on what you preach. You are eternally telling folks there’s a life in front of us that beats this one all hollow, and, now that Providence has really blessed you by giving you a chance to sorter peep ahead at the pearly gates, you are actually balking worse than a mean mule. I say you ought to give me and Virginia a rest. If you can’t possibly raise the scads to pay for having the thing cut out, then pucker up and grin and bear it. Folks will think a sight more of you. Being a baby at both ends of life is foolish—there ain’t nobody willing to do the nursing the second time."