A Daughter of the Land

Kate gazed at Polly in dumb amazement. She was speechless for a

time, then to break the strain she said: "My soul! Did you

really, Polly? I guess there is more Bates in you than I had

thought!"

"Oh, there's SOME Bates in me," said Polly. "There's enough to

make me live until I sign that paper, and make Henry Peters sign

it, and send Mr. Thomlins to you with it and the baby. I can do

that, because I'm going to!"

Ten days later she did exactly what she had said she would. Then

she turned her face to the wall and went into a convulsion out of

which she never came. While the Peters family refused Kate's plea

to lay Polly beside her grandmother, and laid her in their family

lot, Kate, moaning dumbly, sat clasping a tiny red girl in her

arms. Adam drove to Hartley to deposit one more paper, the most

precious of all, in the safety deposit box.

Kate and Adam mourned too deeply to talk about it. They went

about their daily rounds silently, each busy with regrets and self

investigations. They watched each other carefully, were kinder

than they ever had been to everyone they came in contact with; the

baby they frankly adored. Kate had reared her own children with

small misgivings, quite casually, in fact; but her heart was torn

to the depths about this baby. Life never would be even what it

had been before Polly left them, for into her going there entered

an element of self-reproach and continual self-condemnation. Adam

felt that if he had been less occupied with Milly York and had

taken proper care of his sister, he would not have lost her. Kate

had less time for recrimination, because she had the baby.

"Look for a good man to help you this summer, Adam," she said.

"The baby is full of poison which can be eliminated only slowly.

If I don't get it out before teething, I'll lose her, and then we

never shall hear the last from the Peters family." Adam consigned

the Peters family to a location he thought suitable for them on

the instant. He spoke with unusual bitterness, because he had

heard that the Peters family were telling that Polly had grieved

herself to death, while his mother had engineered a scheme whereby

she had stolen the baby. Occasionally a word drifted to Kate here

and there, until she realized much of what they were saying. At

first she grieved too deeply to pay any attention, but as the

summer went on and the baby flourished and grew fine and strong,

and she had time in the garden, she began to feel better; grief

began to wear away, as it always does.

By midsummer the baby was in short clothes, sitting in a high

chair, which if Miss Baby only had known it, was a throne before

which knelt her two adoring subjects. Polly had said the baby

would be like Kate. Its hair and colouring were like hers, but it

had the brown eyes of its father, and enough of his facial lines

to tone down the too generous Bates features. When the baby was

five months old it was too pretty for adequate description. One

baby has no business with perfect features, a mop of curly, yellow

silk hair, and big brown eyes. One of the questions Kate and Adam

discussed most frequently was where they would send her to

college, while one they did not discuss was how sick her stomach

teeth would make her. They merely lived in mortal dread of that.

"Convulsion," was a word that held a terror for Kate above any

other in the medical books.