One afternoon, Willie Deal came up to the Big Woods with his shaggy-haired father to see Tom Graves. Willie Deal had remembered Abbie and brought her a plant in a clay jar he had made. The plant was a green, lacy, fernlike thing, and there were three little, round, scarlet balls on it.

“Whatever are they?” Abbie wanted to know.

“They’re love apples,” Willie told her. “But don’t you ever dare put one up to your mouth. They’re tremendous poisonous.”

Abbie promised that she never, never would so much as touch the poison. For how could Willie Deal and Abbie Mackenzie in the ’fifties know anything about vitamine-filled tomatoes?

And then, in the fall, Janet’s baby was not quite well. No one seemed to know what the matter could be. Maggie O’Conner Mackenzie doctored him with castor oil and peppermint. Grandma Deal sent word by Tom Graves to give him sassafras tea and tie a little bag of asafetida around his neck. When he seemed no better, Janet, pale and worried, said maybe they ought to send for Dr. Matthews. Abbie was frightened beyond measure when she heard that, for she well knew that a doctor was the last resort for saving one who was sick. Tom went out immediately to saddle a horse and go for the doctor. Janet told Abbie to hold the baby while she went out to the lean-to kitchen for warm water. Mother Mackenzie had gone over to her own home for flannel cloths.

And then, Abbie was calling them and crying all in the same breath, “Janet, . . . Mother, . . . come quick . . . oh, come. . . .”

Janet was in the room like a flash, a wild bittern at the call of its young. Abbie could scarcely talk for crying: “I was just holding him as steady. He acted queer, . . . and threw up his arms. He got kind of bluish. What ought I to ’ve done?”

Doctor Matthews came with Tom. He said, yes, the baby was dead. Janet was wild with grief. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she rocked the little cold form back and forth in her arms and would not let them take him from her. Rachel, who lives again in every grieving mother, was crying for her child and would not be comforted.

Over in their own cabin, Abbie sobbed aloud on the bed. Suddenly she sat up, “I hate God,” she said. Maggie Mackenzie hushed her quickly and told her it was tremendous wicked to say that.

“But he made death. I hate death. I hate it.”

“The poor colleen,” her mother said to Belle. “She’s smart like the Mackenzies, . . . but faith . . . an’ she has the Irish heart.”

CHAPTER IV

By the time Abbie was eleven, she was doing more work. Life was not all play now. One of her tasks was to thread the wicks into candle molds, for her slim fingers were more agile than her mother’s short, thick ones. She had to poke the long wick-string through all of the six molds, and carefully loop the tops over a stick to keep them from slipping. Her mother would then pour the hot tallow into the molds and set it away to harden. Abbie was always anxious to see the finished product slip out. She would watch her mother plunge the molds into hot water to loosen the hard grease, and then, “Let me, . . . let me,” she would call, and sometimes Maggie Mackenzie would let her carefully work the shining cream-colored candles out of their containers.