The Devil

But Mavis flatly refused to have any hired person coming between her and the transcendent joy of her life. She had waited long enough for a baby, and she proposed to keep the baby to herself.

"However successful you come to be," she said to her husband, earnestly, "I shouldn't like you to make a fine lady of me. I want to go on feeling I'm useful to you. That's my pleasure--and if good luck took it from me, I'd almost wish the bad luck back again."

"Hush," he said, gravely. "Don't speak of such a wish, even in joke."

"I only meant I'd wish for the time since we came here. I wasn't thinking of anything before then."

"All right;" and he stooped over her, and kissed her. "You've bin talking more'n enough, I dare say. Take care of yourself, and get well as fast as may be. For I can't do without you."

"That's what I wanted to hear."

"You don't take it for granted yet?"

"No. I want you to say it every time I see you."

"Good night--an' happy dreams."

"Will!" Mavis' voice was full of reproach. "Are you going without kissing the baby?"

Then Dale came back from the doorway, stooped again, and making his lips as light as a butterfly's wings, kissed his first-born.

Before September was over Mavis had not only recovered her ordinary health, but had entered into such stores of new energy that nothing could hinder her from getting back into harness. She herself was astonished by her physical sensations. Languors that had seemed an essential part of her temperament ever since girlhood were now only memories; she felt more alive when passive now than during extreme excitement in the past; her whole body, from the surface to the bones, appeared to be larger and yet more compact. Even the muscles of her back and legs, which ought to have been relaxed and feeble after weeks of bed, had the tone and hardness that only exercise is supposed to induce; so that when standing or walking she experienced a curiously stimulating sense of solidity and power, as if her hold upon the ground was heavier and firmer than it had ever been, although she could move about from place to place with incredibly more lightness and ease.

These new sensations were strong in her one morning when, Dale having risen at dawn, she determined to take a ramble or tour of inspection before the day's work began; and with the mere bodily well-being there was a mental vigorousness that made the notion of all future effort, whether casual or persistent, seem equally pleasurable.