The child was a young girl, and she called out, “Good aunt, my mother’s hour is come, and she says will you hasten, for you know how quick she is, and she sits ready and waiting for you to catch the babe!” The mother straightened her bent back then and answered, “Aye, tell her I will come,” and she turned to the lad and said, “Take my hoe and weed these beans as best you can while I am gone. It will not be above an hour or so, if she is as quick as she always is.” So saying she went across the fields and followed behind the girl who ran ahead, and as the woman walked it came over her in some new way how sweet a day this was. Living in this valley every day and laboring as she must, she never thought to lift her head to see what the world was about her, but her whole thought was on the land or in her house and her eyes bent to them always. But now she lifted her head as she walked and saw. The willows were full of tender leaves shining green, and the white blossoms of the pear trees were full blown this day and drifting in the winds, and here and there a pomegranate tree flamed scarlet in its early leaves. The wind, too, was very warm, and it came in sudden gusts and died again, and she did not know which was sweeter, the deep warm silence when the wind died and the smell of the earth came up from the ploughed fields, or the windy fragrance of the gusts. But walking thus in the silences and in the sudden winds, she felt her body strong and full and young, and a great new longing seized her for the man. Nearly every spring she had given birth, nearly every spring since she was wed, but this spring was her body barren. Once it had seemed a usual common thing to bear a child, and a thing to be done again and again, but now it seemed a joy she had not seen was joy until now, and her loneliness came over her like a pain and her breasts ached when she thought of the thing, and it was this, that she would never bear a child again in such a spring unless her man came home. Suddenly her longing streamed out of her like a cry, “Oh--come home--come home!” Yes, she seemed to hear her own voice cry the words, and she stopped, frightened lest she had called them out before the young girl. Yet she had not cried aloud, and when she stopped there was but the voice of the wind and the loud bright music of a blackbird in a pomegranate tree.