Love stories; Reducing diets -- Fiction; Widows -- Fiction
I saw the worst was over, and I breathed freely again. There was nothing
for it but to go with him, and I wanted to most awfully.
To my dying day I'll never forget that little house, away out on the
hillside, he took me to in his shabby little car. Just two tiny rooms,
but they were clean and quiet, and a girl with the sweetest face I ever
saw, lay in the bed with her eyes bright with pride, and a tiny, tiny
little bundle close beside her. The young farmer was red with
embarrassment and anxiety.
"She's all right to-day, but she worries because she don't think I can
tend to the baby right," he said; and he did look helpless. "Her mother
had to go home for two days, but is coming to-morrow. I dasn't undress
and wash the youngster myself. It won't hurt him to stay bundled up
until granny comes, will it, doc?"
"Not a bit," answered Dr. John in his big comforting voice.
But I looked at the girl, and I understood her. She wanted that baby
clean and fresh, even if it was just five days old, and I felt all of a
sudden terribly capable. I picked up the bundle and went into the other
room with it where a kettle was boiling on the stove and a large bucket
by the door. I found things by just a glance from her, and the hour
I spent with that small baby was one of the most delicious of all my
life. I never was left entirely to myself with one before, and I did
all I wanted to this one, guided by instinct and desire. He slept right
through and was the darlingest thing I ever saw when I laid him back
on the bed by her. I never looked in Dr. John's direction once, though
I felt him all the time.
But on the way home I gave myself the surprise of my life! Suddenly
I turned my face against his sleeve and cried as I never had before.
I felt safe, for it is a steep road, and he had to drive carefully.
However, he managed to press that one arm against my cheek in a way that
comforted me into stopping when I saw we were near town. I got out of
the car at the garage and walked away through the garden home, without
looking in his direction at all. I never seem to be able to look at him
as I do at other people. We hadn't spoken two words since we had left
the little house in the woods with that happy-faced girl in it. He has
more sense than just a man.
It was almost dusk, and I stopped in the garden a minute to pull the
earth closer round some of the bachelor's-buttons that had "popped" the
ground some weeks ago. Thinking about them made me regain my spirits,
and I went on in the house quite prepared to be scolded for whatever
Aunt Adeline had thought of while I was gone. Jane told me with her
broadest grin that she had gone down to her sister-in-law's for supper,
and I sat down with a sigh of relief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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