onsadine household, was always full of enthusiasm. "Just a few nails
and a little wrappin' of twine'll make it all right," he informed his
niece. "I stopped a-past and borried the nails and the hammer from Jeff
Dawes; I mighty nigh pounded my thumb off knockin' in nails with a rock
an' a sad-iron last week."

"Looks like nobody ain't got no sense," returned Laurella Consadine
ungratefully. "Even you, Unc' Pros--while you borryin' why cain't ye
borry whole things that don't need mendin'?"

Out of the shadows that hoarded the further end of the room came a woman
with a little bundle in her arm which had evidently created the
necessity for the borrowed cradle.

"Laurelly," the nurse hesitated, "I wouldn't name it to ye whilst ye was
a-sufferin,' but I jest cain't find the baby's clothes nowhars. I've
done washed the little trick and wrapped her in my flannen petticoat. I
do despise to put anything on 'em that anybody else has wore ... hit
don't seem right. But I've been plumb through everything, an' cain't
find none of her coats. Whar did you put 'em?"

"I didn't have no luck borryin' for this one," complained the sick woman
fretfully. "Looks like everybody's got that mean that they wouldn't lend
me a rag ... an' the Lord knows I only ast a _wearin'_ of the clothes
for my chillen. Folks can make shore that I return what I borry--ef the
Lord lets me."

"Ain't they nothin' to put on the baby?" asked Mavity Bence, aghast.

"No. Hit's jest like I been tellin' ye, I went to Tarver's wife--she's
got a plenty. I knowed in reason she'd have baby clothes that she
couldn't expect to wear out on her own chillen. I said as much to her,
when she told me she was liable to need 'em befo' I did. I says, 'Ye
cain't need more'n half of 'em, I reckon, an' half'll do me, an' I'll
return 'em to ye when I'm done with 'em.' She acted jest as
selfish--said she'd like to know how I was goin' to inshore her that it
wouldn't be twins agin same as 'twas before. Some folks is powerful mean
an' suspicious."

All this time the nurse had been standing with the quiet small packet
which was the storm centre of preparation lying like a cocoon or a giant
seed-pod against her bosom.

"She's a mighty likely little gal," said she finally. "Have ye any hopes
o' gittin' anything to put on her?"

The woman in the bed--she was scarcely more than a girl, with shining
dark eyes and a profusion of jetty ringlets about her elfish, pretty
little face--seemed