Something in the cadence of her voice made Mrs. B turn to take her in. The missus had stepped back into her slippers and redraped her shawl. She was very still, hands circling her swollen belly, staring down through the thin white linen with a wistful smile on her lips, as if saying hello and good-bye all at once. She’d looked so unafraid of everything until then: an older woman, late thirties maybe, experienced, with the way of the world about her. The midwife thought most women made far too much of the difficulties and inconveniences of childbearing, that it was a natural condition—not a disease at all—and ought to be treated as such. The woman in front of her now seemed not like them at all. No, she seemed the sort to look the task in the face, let Nature take charge, but help it along where she could, a short country walk, she guessed, gentle ride in a carriage, walk up and down the stairs, or busy herself in the early going with the distraction of dumplings, the spiced scent of a groaning cake. But standing there, some softness bled through the woman’s strength.

“Shall I call you Mrs. G, then?” asked the midwife. “Just to shorten things up, same for both of us?”

“Mrs. G?”

“Or Mrs. Godwin, if you like.”

“Mrs. Godwin? Who the devil is that?” the woman said with a bright laugh.

Mrs. B looked at her, confused.

“I’m sorry. It’s only that I don’t think of myself that way. ‘Mrs. Godwin.’ Though it’s been four months already.”

Mrs. B made the count of months in her head. She was a Christian woman but didn’t judge. “Well, then, new married. Congratulations, I guess, are in order.”

“Except that it goes against everything I believe.”

“What’s that?”

“Marrying at all.”

Mrs. B was accustomed to women in her state saying things they might otherwise not, especially as the pains came closer together—sometimes things they would later regret, causing them to swear her to silence. She had heard secrets and gossip, pleas and gibberish, screaming, moaning, crying and curses, but never a declaration so clearheaded as this. Mrs. Godwin seemed to be staring at her, almost daring her to disapprove. But Mrs. B only smiled, in a way that didn’t show her teeth.

“Well, we’ve a bit of a wait on our hands,” she said, setting out the last of her tincture jars. “What shall we do with it?”

“I asked Mr. Godwin to send me a newspaper, a novel, any book—some amusement to while the hours away.”

“Maybe tell her your story, why don’t you?” said the midwife, nodding toward the missus’s womb. “Just for her.”

“Why do you think she’s taking her time?”