Early in September George arrived. Reuben\'s face kindled when the doctor told him he had escaped Georgina.

The doctor, however, did not look pleased.

"Perhaps now you have enough boys?" he said rather truculently.

"Well, there\'s six...."

"I hope that\'s enough to satisfy you. Because there won\'t be any more—— She\'s dying."

"Dying!"

He repeated the word almost stupidly.

"Yes"—said Dr. Espinette. He did not feel inclined to mince matters with Backfield.

"But—but—can\'t you do anything for her, surelye?"

"I\'m afraid not. Of course, one can never speak with absolute certainty even in a case like this. But——" and the doctor wasted some medical technicalities on Reuben.

The young man turned from him, half-dazed. Dying! Naomi! A sudden wild pang smote through his heart for the mother of his children.

"Do something for her! you can—you must."

"I\'m going over to Gablehook now, but I\'ll call in on the way back. I\'m afraid there\'s not much hope; however, I\'ll do my best."

Reuben\'s sudden pallor and blank eyes had softened his heart a little. But, he reflected the next moment, there was no sense in pitying Backfield.

Reuben did not wait any longer—he dashed out of the room and upstairs to his wife\'s door.

He knocked. From within came a faint sound of moaning. He knocked again. The midwife opened the door.

"Go away," she said, "we can\'t let you in."

"I want to see Naomi."

"You can\'t."

"I must. Hem it! ?un\'t I her husband?"

"You can come back in an hour or two. But you must go now—" and she shut the door in his face.

Reuben slunk away, angry and miserable.

He pottered about the farm all the morning. Somehow these terrible events reminded him of the birth of his first child, when he had moped and fretted and sulked—and all for nothing. That seemed twenty years ago. Now he did not fret for nothing. His wife was dying, still young, still sometimes beautiful. His mind was full of jumbled memories of her—he saw her as Harry\'s sweetheart, sitting with him on Boarzell while he sang; he saw her in the dairy where he had first kissed her stooping over the cream; he saw her as his bride, flushed and timid beside him at the wedding-feast, as the mother of his boys, proud and full-bosomed. But mostly his thoughts were more trivial and tattered—memories of her in certain gowns, in a cap she had bought because, having three little boys, she thought she must "dress older"; memories of little things she had said—"Why don\'t you keep bees, Reuben? Why don\'t you keep bees? They\'re such pretty things, and I like the honey...."

Towards two in the afternoon he came in, tired and puff-eyed with misery, his brain all of a jangle. "Why don\'t you keep bees, Reuben? Why don\'t you keep bees?"

He sat down at the table which the children had left, and mechanically began to eat. His healthy young body claimed its dues, and almost without knowing it he cleared the plate before him. Harry sat in the chimney corner, murmuring, "Why d?an\'t you kip bees, Reuben? Why d?an\'t you kip bees?"—showing that he had uttered his thoughts aloud, just as the[Pg 117] empty platters showed him he had made a very good dinner.

At last, strengthened by the food, he went up to Naomi\'s room again. This time he was admitted.

She lay propped high on the pillows, and he was astonished to see how well she looked, much better than before the baby was born. The infant George lay like a rather ugly doll on his grandmother\'s lap. He was not so healthy as the other children, indeed for a time it had been doubtful whether he would live.

Naomi smiled feebly, and that smile, so wan, so patient, so utterly wistful, so utterly unregretful, with which almost every mother first greets the father of her child, went straight to Reuben\'s heart. He fell on his knees by the bed, and covered her hand and her thin arm with kisses.

"Naomi, my darling, my love, git well—you mustn\'t die and leave me."

Actually h............