"No, we can't. There's naun the matter wud her really. She's always crying." Naomi faced him almost spitefully. "If one of the boys had hurt his little finger you'd have doctor in at once. It's only because it's Fanny. You don't love her, you----" "Now none o' that, missus," said Reuben roughly--"you put the child back in her cradle, and go and lie down yourself. I döan't want to have to fetch doctor in to _you_." Naomi had not acquired the art of flouting him openly. She tearfully put Fanny into her cradle, and lay and sulked on the sofa for the rest of the evening. That night she dreamed that her new baby was born, and that Reuben had taken away Fanny and given her to Beatup. Beatup was carrying her down to the pond to drown her as he drowned the kittens, and Naomi stood in the garden with immovable weights on every limb listening to the despairing shrieks of her little girl. They were dreadful shrieks, not like a baby's at all. They still sounded when Naomi woke. She sat up in bed, uncertain as to whether she were dreaming or not. Then from Fanny's little bed beside the big one came something terrible--a low long wail like an animal's dying into a moan. It seemed as if her heart stopped beating. She felt the sweat rush out all over her body. The next minute she was out of bed, groping for Fanny in the darkness. She found her and lifted her in her arms; once more that dreadful wailing moan came from the little body, mingling this time with a snore from Reuben. Naomi, still grasping Fanny, managed to light a candle. The child's face was deadly white and drawn in a strange way, while her lips were blue. "Reuben!" shrieked Naomi. He did not wake. Worn out with hard work and his anxiety about his farm, he still slept heavily, rolled in the blanket. A sick insane rage seized Naomi. She sprang on the bed, tore the clothes off him, shook him, beat him, pulled his hair, while all the time she grasped the now silent Fanny convulsively between her left arm and her breast. "My child's dying. Get up, you brute. Fetch the doctor. My child's dying!" For a moment Reuben was bewildered with his sudden waking, but he soon came to himself at the sight of his wife's distorted face and the inanimate lop-headed baby. He sprang up, pulled on his trousers, and in two minutes had bundled the half-conscious but utterly willing Beatup out of his attic, and sent him off on the fastest horse to Rye. Then he came back into the bedroom. Naomi was sitting on the floor, her hair falling over her shoulders, the baby unconscious on her lap. "Give her to me, child--let me look." "No, no--get away," and Naomi once more caught up Fanny to her breast. "I'll go and fetch mother." Mrs. Backfield arrived in a washed-out bed-gown. A fire was lit and water put on to boil. Fanny's, however, did not seem just an ordinary case of "fits"; she lay limp in her mother's arms, strangely blue round the mouth, her eyes half open.