He pottered about the farm all the morning. Somehow these terrible events reminded him of the birth of his first child, when he had moped and fretted and sulked--and all for nothing. That seemed twenty years ago. Now he did not fret for nothing. His wife was dying, still young, still sometimes beautiful. His mind was full of jumbled memories of her--he saw her as Harry's sweetheart, sitting with him on Boarzell while he sang; he saw her in the dairy where he had first kissed her stooping over the cream; he saw her as his bride, flushed and timid beside him at the wedding-feast, as the mother of his boys, proud and full-bosomed. But mostly his thoughts were more trivial and tattered--memories of her in certain gowns, in a cap she had bought because, having three little boys, she thought she must "dress older"; memories of little things she had said--"Why don't you keep bees, Reuben? Why don't you keep bees? They're such pretty things, and I like the honey...." Towards two in the afternoon he came in, tired and puff-eyed with misery, his brain all of a jangle. "Why don't you keep bees, Reuben? Why don't you keep bees?" He sat down at the table which the children had left, and mechanically began to eat. His healthy young body claimed its dues, and almost without knowing it he cleared the plate before him. Harry sat in the chimney corner, murmuring, "Why döan't you kip bees, Reuben? Why döan't you kip bees?"--showing that he had uttered his thoughts aloud, just as the empty platters showed him he had made a very good dinner. At last, strengthened by the food, he went up to Naomi's room again. This time he was admitted. She lay propped high on the pillows, and he was astonished to see how well she looked, much better than before the baby was born. The infant George lay like a rather ugly doll on his grandmother's lap. He was not so healthy as the other children, indeed for a time it had been doubtful whether he would live. Naomi smiled feebly, and that smile, so wan, so patient, so utterly wistful, so utterly unregretful, with which almost every mother first greets the father of her child, went straight to Reuben's heart. He fell on his knees by the bed, and covered her hand and her thin arm with kisses. "Naomi, my darling, my love, git well--you mustn't die and leave me." Actually his tears fell on her hand, and a rather bitter compassion for him drove away the more normal mood. He had killed her, and he was sorry for it. But if he had it all to do over again he would do it, for the sake of the land which was so much more to him than her life. "My sweet," he murmured, holding her palm against his mouth, "my liddle creature, my liddle sweet. Git well, and you shan't never have to go through this agäun. Six boys is all I'll want to help me, surelye--and you shall rest and be happy, liddle wife, and be proud of your children and the gurt things they're going to do."