In her time she called upon their cousin’s wife, and when the cousin’s wife needed it, she did the same for her. So now upon a sweet and windy day in spring the woman felt her hour on her and she went across the field and set her hoe against the house and she called out to the house across the way and the cousin’s wife came running, wiping her hands on her apron as she came, for she had been washing clothes at the pond’s edge. This cousin’s wife was a kindly, good woman, her face round and brown and her nostrils black and upturned above a big red mouth. She was a noisy, busy soul, talking the livelong day beside her silent man, and now she came bustling and laughing and shouting as she came, “Well, goodwife, I do ever say how good a thing it is that we do not come together. I have been watching you and wondering which would come first, you or I. But I am slower somehow this year than I thought to be, and you are bearing and I but just begun!” Her voice came out big and loud when she said this, for it was her way, and women hearing called from other houses and they said gaily, “Your hour is it, goodwife? Well, luck then, and a son!” And one who was a widow and a gossip called out mournfully, “Aye, make the most of your man while you have him, for here be I, a good bearing woman too, and no man any more!” But the mother answered nothing. She smiled a little, pale under the dust and the sweat upon her face and she went into the house. The old woman followed after chattering and laughing in her pleasure in the hour, and she said, “I ever said when my hour used to come, and you know I bore nine children in my time, daughter, and all good sound children until they died, and I ever said--” But the mother did not hear. She took a little stool and sat down without speaking anything and smoothed the rough hair from her face with her two hands and her hands were wet with sweat--not the sweat of the fields, but this new sweat of pain. And she took up the edge of her coat and wiped her face, and she uncoiled her thick long hair and bound it fresh and firm. Then the pain caught her hard, and she bent over silently, waiting. Beside her the old woman clacked on and the cousin’s wife laughed at her, but when she saw the mother bend like this she ran and shut the door, and stood to wait. But suddenly there came a beating on the door and it was the boy. He saw the door closed in the day and his mother inside and he was afraid and he set up a cry and would have the door opened. At first the mother said, “Let him be there so that I may have peace at this task,” and the cousin’s wife went to the door and bawled through the crack, “Stay there for a while for your mother is at her task!” And the old woman echoed, “Stay there, my little one, and I will give you a penny to buy peanuts if you will play well and you shall see what your mother will have for you in a little while!”