And then Abbie was not well, . . .

“She’s not doing her share,” Abbie overheard Grandma’s sputtering. “I told you it was too good to be true. I said all the time it wouldn’t last.”

“Now, Mother,” Grandpa’s voice came gently, patiently, “I think I know what’s the matter. You wouldn’t want her to overdo.”

“Overdo, nothing. I brought eight babies into the world. And I ain’t ever seen the time anybody cared if I was overdoin’.”

“Now, Mother, I wouldn’t say that. It was hard, but you was healthy and I always got help for you.”

“Yes, a passel o’ neighbor girls that wasn’t worth their weight in salt. Now, I s’pose it’ll fall on me to take care o’ Abbie. Nobody cares if I die or not.”

Abbie heard Grandpa go whistling down to the barn. Then she threw herself on the bed and cried tears of sensitiveness and discontent.

More and more she wanted her own home. If it were no better than the old sheep shed that she lived in one summer when she was a little girl, at least it would be their own. Will was good to her,—so kind and understanding, but he did not seem to sense how much she wanted a home of her own.

Abbie’s baby was born in January of 1867. Roads were drifted and Doc Matthews, in a coonskin cap with the tail down his back, came on a horse, his saddle-bags full of quinine and calomel.

Nature had to take its course without much aid from its handmaid, Science—and Nature took a fiendish course with Abbie. Two days and a night she wrestled with Nature, as Jacob wrestled with the angel. And then she had a son. Lying there after her ordeal, with the baby on her arm, she knew the age-old surge of mother-love. All her old love of life seemed to concentrate on one thing,—the little soft, helpless bundle. The world of romance, of courtly men and lovely ladies was a world of unreality,—and only Will and the little son were worth her thoughts.

Mackenzie Deal, they named him, but it was too big a mouthful for so small a bit of humanity, and it was not long until every one had shortened it to Mack. Will was inordinately proud of him. Grandpa Deal and Louise came in several times a day to see him, but Regina was not overly interested. Grandma Deal sputtered about the care of him. Why didn’t Abbie keep more shawls around him? Why did she let the sun shine across the bed that way? Why did she ask the doctor all those questions when he didn’t know as much about babies as a mother?

When Abbie was up, life grew richer, more full. Her voice took on a mellowness. With the baby in the high-backed wooden rocker, she crooned old lullabies which Maggie O’Conner had brought from the whins of Bally-poreen.

As little Mack grew that year and crept and then stood on fat wobbling legs by the chairs, Abbie’s desire for a home of her own reached gigantic proportions.