This humdrum view of childbirth, although it might have relieved her self-consciousness, was not at all welcome to Jenny. She could not bring herself to believe that, when after so many years of speculation on this very subject, she herself was going to have a baby, the world at large would remain profoundly indifferent. She remembered how as a child she had played with dolls, and how in the foggy weeks before Christmas she had been wont to identify her anticipation with the emotional expectancy of young motherhood. And now it was actually in the slow process of happening, this event, happening, too, as far as could be judged, without any violent or even mildly perceptible transfiguration, mental or physical. Still it must not be forgotten that Mrs. Trewhella had divined her condition. By what? Certainly not at present by her form or complexion. "I think it's your eyes," said May. "What's the matter with them now?" "They look different somehow. Sort of far-away look which you didn't use to have." "Shut up," scoffed Jenny, greatly embarrassed. That evening when, after tea, Jenny leaned against the stone hedge under a sunset of rosy cumulus, Trewhella came through the garden and faced her. "So you and me's going to have a child, missus?" Jenny resented the assumption of his partnership and gave a cold affirmative. "That's a good job," he sighed, staring out into the air stained with crimson from twilight's approach. "I feel brim pleased about that. There'll be some fine Harvest Home to Bochyn come September month." Then from the vagueness of such expressed aspirations Zachary turned to a practical view of the matter on hand, regarding his wife earnestly as he might from the support of a gate have looked discriminatingly at a field of young wheat. "Is there anything you do want?" he presently inquired. Perhaps the cool straightness of the question contained a hint of expert advice, as if for his field he would prescribe phosphates or nitrate or sulphate of ammonia. There was no suggestion of spiritual needs that might call out for nourishment under the stress of a new experience. Jenny felt that she was being sized up with a view to the best practical conduct of the agitating business. "I wish you wouldn't talk about me," she protested, "like you talked about that cow the other day at dinner." Trewhella looked perplexed. He never seemed able to grasp whether this sharp-voiced Londoner whom he had married were laughing at him or not. "I've always heard it spoken," he began slowly. He always proceeded slowly with a conversation that held a warning of barbed wire, as if by disregarding the obstacle and by cautious advance any defense could be broken down.