And the mother said modestly but pleased at all this praise, “Oh, aye, I eat as well as ever. Three bowls and often four I eat, and I can eat anything not too hard since my front teeth fell away, and I am very sound at such times as I have not got my flux.” “A very sound old soul,” murmured the cousin’s wife, and then she slept a little and woke again and saw the mother there and smiled her wide sleepy smile and said, “A grandson, did you say? Aye, we have seven now of grandsons alone--and none too many--” and slept again peacefully. * * * * * So did the great news fill the days that had been empty because the younger son did not come, and this new joy took the edge from the mother’s waiting and she thought he must come some time or other and let it rest at that. But it was not all joy either, and like every joy she ever had, the mother thought, there was always something wrong in it to make it go amiss if so it could. Here the thing was. She feared lest the child be born a girl and when she thought of this she muttered, “Yes, and it would be like my ever evil destiny if it were born a girl.” And in her anxiety she would have liked to go and ask that potent little goddess that she knew and make a bribe to her of a new robe of red or new shoes or some such thing if she would make the child a boy. But she did not dare to go lest she recall to the goddess’ mind that old sin of hers, and she feared the goddess lest her old sin was not yet atoned for, even with the sorrow that she had, and that if the goddess saw her and heard her speak of grandsons, she might remember and reach out and smite the little one in the womb. She thought to herself, most miserably, “Better if I do not go and show myself at all. If I stay away and do not tell her that the child is coming, she may forget me this long time I have not been to any gods, and it will be but the birth of another mortal and not my grandson, and I must chance it is a boy.”