It was most pleasant, being asked by everyone, even by General Byington,
how it felt to be a grandmother. "Oh! ho, ho!" Mrs. Morris's unutilized
dimple kept itself busy to the point of positive fatigue.
Even more delightful was it, when the time came round for the totality
of her sex--the only sex worth considering--to call and see the babe and
mother, to hear them all proclaim it the prettiest infant ever seen, and
covertly pronounce Isabel more beautiful than on her wedding day.
In a way she was; and particularly when they fondly rallied her upon her
new accession of motherly practical manner, and she laughed with them,
and ended with that merry, mellow sigh which still gave Ruth new pride
in her and new hope. But another source of Ruth's new hope was that
Arthur, who had written to the bishop and resigned his calling the day
after Mrs. Morris's little namesake was born, had at length withdrawn
his letter.
"It is to your brother we owe its withdrawal," said the bishop,
privately, to Ruth.
She beamed gratefully, but did not tell him that, after the long, secret
conference between her brother and the rector, Leonard had come to her
and wept for Arthur the only tears he had ever shed in her presence.
Now Leonard had found occasion to go West for a time, though he still
held his office; and Arthur was filling the rectorate almost in the old
first way. On some small parish matter the rustic vestryman with the
spectacled daughter came to Arthur's library in better spirits than he
had shown for months, and by and by asked conjecturally, "I--eh--guess
you don't keep any babies here you're ashamed to show, do ye?" and held
his mouth very wide open.
The infinitesimal was brought.
"Well, I vum! Why, Miz. Winslow, I don't believe th' ever was a pretty
baby so puny, nor a puny baby so pretty! Now, if it's a fair question, I
hope y' ain't tryin' to push in between this baby and the keaow, be ye?"
"No," laughed Isabel. "I'm not that conceited. I should only be in the
way."
"Well," he said as they parted, shaking Arthur's hand to the end of his
speech, "I like to see a baby resemble its father, and that's what this
'n 's a-tryin' to do, jest 's hard 's she can."
So went matters for a time, and then, while the babe began to fill out
and lengthen out, Isabel showed herself daily more and more overspent.
The physician reappeared, and spoke plainly:--
"And if your cousin down South is so determined to have you at her
wedding, why, go! Leave your baby with your mother; she's older in the
business than you are."
But the cousin's wedding was weeks away yet, and Isabel clung to her wee
treasure, and temporized with the aunts and cousins in the South and
with her mother and Ruth at home, until the doctor spoke again.
"Let's see," he said to Arthur. "This is November, baby's five months
old. Send your wife away. Put her out! Something's killing her by
inches, and I believe it's just care o' the nest. We must drive her off
it, as I drove Leonard Byington off,--which, you remember, you, quietly,
were the first to suggest to me to do.... Coming back, you
say,--Byington? Yes, but only for a day or two,--election time."
It did not occur to the doctor that Arthur was secretly keeping his wife
from going anywhere.
The night Leonard came home the old pond, for the first time in the
season, froze over, and through Giles's activities it was arranged next
day that Martin Kelly, Sarah Stebbens, Minnie, and he should go down
there after supper and skate by the light of fagot fires made out on the
ice. Giles piled the fagots; but at a late moment, to the disgust of
Giles and Minnie, the older pair pitilessly changed their minds, and
decided they were too old to make such nincompoops of themselves. Minnie
would not go without Sarah, for Minnie was up to her pretty eyebrows in
love with Giles, as well as immensely correct; and so there, as it
seemed, was the end of that.
At tea Arthur told Isabel he was going for a long walk down through the
town and across the meadows, and would not be home before bedtime.
Isabel approved heartily, and said Sarah would stay near the sleeping
babe, and she would spend the evening with her mother. She and Arthur
went together as far as the cross-paths in the arbor, and there, in
parting, he clasped and kissed her with a sudden frenzy that only added
one more distressful misgiving to the many that now haunted her days.
She found her mother alone. They sat down, hand in hand, before an open
fire, and had talked in sweet quietness but a short while, when a chance
word and the knowledge that this time they would not be interrupted made
it easy for Isabel to say things she had for weeks been trying to say.