But if she did the son’s wife answered always sharply, “She does well, doubtless--a very lucky thing for all that you found one who would have her for his son.” “Now she is a clever maid, too, daughter-in-law,” the mother said hotly. “You never would believe how much she could do, I know, but before you came she did much that when you came you would not let her do and so you never knew how well she did.” “Aye, it may be so,” said the son’s wife, holding nearer to her eyes the cloth she sewed on to see if it were right. “But I am used to working on and finishing with what I do and a blind maid potters so.” The mother sighed again and said, looking over the empty threshold, “I wish you would bear a babe, daughter. A house should have a child or two or three in it. I am not used to such an empty house as this. I wish my little son could wed if you are not to have a child, but he will not, somehow, for some reason.” Now here was the young wife’s grief, that though she had been wed near upon five years she had no child yet and not a sign of one, and she had gone secretly to a temple to pray and had done all she knew and still her body stayed as barren as it had been. But she was too proud to show how grieved she was and now she said, calmly, “I will have sons in time, doubtless.” “Aye, but it is time,” the mother said pettishly. “I never heard of any women in our hamlet who had not babes if they had husbands. Our men are fathers as soon as they mate themselves and the women always fertile--good seed, good soil. It must be you have some hidden illness in you somewhere to make you barren and unnatural. I made you those clothes full and big, and what use has it been!” And to the cousin’s wife the mother complained, and she said, leaning to put her mouth against the other’s ear, “I know very well what is wrong--there are no heats in that son’s wife of mine. She is a pale and yellow thing and one day is like the next and there is never any good flush in her from within, and all your luck in cutting her wedding garments cannot prevail against her coldness.” And the cousin’s wife nodded and laughed and said, “It is true enough that such pale and bloodless women are very slow to bear.” Then her little laughing eyes grew meaningful and she laughed again and said, “But not every woman can be so full of heats as you were in your time, good sister, and well you know it is not always a good thing in a woman!” Then the mother answered hastily, “Oh, aye, I know that--” and fell silent for a time and then after a while she said unwillingly, “It is true she is a careful woman, clean and almost too clean and scraping out the pot so often I swear she wastes the food with so much washing of the oil jar and the like. And she washes herself every little time or so, and it may be this is why she goes barren. Too much washing is not always well.”