ary went on to the barn, and opened the door, and listened. She had
brought no lantern, but the soft stillness within needed no vigilance.
The hay smell from the loft and the mangers, the even breath of the
cows, the quiet safety of the place, met her. She was wondering at
herself, but she was struggling not at all. It was as if concerning the
little boy, something had decided for her, in a soft, fierce rush of
feeling not her own. She had committed herself to Jenny almost without
will. But Mary felt no exultation, and the weight within her did not
lift.

"I really couldn't do anything else but take him, I s'pose," she
thought. "I wonder what'll come on me next?"

All the while, she was conscious of the raw smell of the clover in the
hay of the mangers, as if something of Summer were there in the cold.

VI

Mary Chavah sent her letter of blunt directions concerning her sister's
headstone and the few belongings which her sister had wished her to
have. The last lines of the letter were about the boy.

"Send the little one along. I am not the one, but I don't know what else
to tell you to do with him. Let me know when to expect him, and put his
name in with his things--I can't remember his right name."

When the answer came from John Blood, a fortnight later, it said that a
young fellow of those parts was starting back home shortly to spend
Christmas, and would take charge of the child as far as the City, and
there put him on his train for Old Trail Town. She would be notified
just what day to expect him, and John knew how glad his mother would
have been and his father too, and he was her grateful Nephew. P. S. He
would send some money every month "toward him."

The night after she received this letter, Mary lay long awake, facing
what it was going to mean to have him there: to have a child there.

She recalled what she had heard other women say about it,--stray
utterances, made with the burdened look that hid a secret complacency, a
kind of pleased freemasonry in a universal lot.

"The children bring so much sand into the house. You'd think it was
horses."

"... the center table looks loaded and ready to start half the time ...
but I can't help it, with the children's books and truck."

"... never would have another house built without a coat closet. The
children's cloaks and caps and rubbers litter up everything."

"... every one of their knees out, and their underclothes outgrown, and
their waists