“Well’m. I’m a little tired, but I had to see you to ask you something.” Sarah looked at the girl, waiting for her to go on, but Juanita was suddenly shy. “Well’m. I wondered if. I wanted to ask you can I be this baby’s nurse?” It was said, and Juanita looked at Sarah as if much depended on the answer she was given.

“I see no reason not,” Sarah said consideringly. “Why do you want to be?”

Having the matter settled, Juanita looked down at the child. “Oh,” she said vaguely, “I don’t know’m. I love a baby.”

“You may certainly look after her—unless her mother wants to herself.” Seeing alarm spread over Juanita’s face, she added hastily, “But I don’t think she will, and in any case she’ll need someone to help her.”

Reassured, Juanita said, “What’s her name?”

“Why—” Sarah laughed, forgetting to whisper. “Do you know, she never, my sister, talked about naming the child, never talked about boys’ names or girls’ names! I’ll ask her when she wakes.”

The hall door opened, and Lovey entered with a tray, followed by Fedora, a stout and very black woman, who went straight to the cradle. Lovey set the tray down on a table beside Lauretta’s bed. To Juanita she said, “Open the curtains so air can come in. This room stinks.” Juanita obeyed, and went anxiously back to Fedora who had picked up the baby, waking her and causing her to cry. Juanita hovered over the two—Fedora had taken her chair—as Fedora bared a breast and offered it. The child stopped crying when she found the nipple. Fedora gave Juanita a dazzling smile of superiority.

“Wake up, miss,” Lovey said at the bed, where Sarah joined her. “Time for you to eat.”

Lauretta opened her eyes. “I’m awake,” she said faintly. “I haven’t slept at all.”

“You slept,” Lovey assured her, “some hours.”

“How can you know?”

“You snored.”

“I don’t snore.”

“Yes, you do. Raise your head up a little.”

“I don’t want food.”

“You need it. Gruel made with squirrel stock. It’ll strengthen you.” She lifted the inverted top bowl off the gruel, picked up a spoon, and began to spoon it into Lauretta’s mouth. Lauretta soon was eating greedily and finished the bowlful. Lovey handed her a glass of milk, which she began to drink.

It was only then she saw, or at any rate acknowledged, Sarah. As soon as their eyes met, Sarah bent and kissed her cheek. “You’ve a pretty daughter,” she said.

Lauretta frowned. “All babies are ugly.”

“Juanita has fallen in love with her and insists on being her nurse! She also wants to know what to call her.” The sisters looked at each other, Sarah smiling, Lauretta blank-faced, not yet realizing, it seemed, that her ordeal had produced a human life.