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The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim’s wife, after about ten o’clock, said:–

“Now, Emmy, I’m going down to Smith’s to get a dress pattern, and I want you to keep quiet right here in bed. I’ll be right back; I’ll set some water here, and I guess you won’t want anything else until I get back. I’ll run right down and right back.”

After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few minutes listening, waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet.

The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window which looked toward her sister’s house, and with a wild exultation flung the sheet far out and dropped on her knees beside the open window.

She moaned and cried wildly as she waved the sheet. The note of a scared child was in her voice.

“Oh, Serry, come quick! Oh, I need you, Serry! I didn’t mean to be mean; I want to see you so! Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Serry, come quick!”

Then space and the world slipped away, and she knew nothing of time again until she heard the anxious voice of Sarah below.

“Emmy, where are you, Emmy?”

“Here I be, Serry.”

With swift, heavy tread Sarah hurried up the stairs, and the dear old face shone upon her again; those kind gray eyes full of anxiety and of love.

Emma looked up like a child entreating to be lifted. Her look so pitifully eager went to the younger sister’s maternal heart.

“You poor, dear soul! Why didn’t you send for me before?”

“Oh, Serry, don’t leave me again, will you?”

When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma’s side in the bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat face could express.

“You ain’t needed here,” she said coldly. “If you want to do anything, find a man and send him for the Doctor–quick. If she dies you’ll be her murderer.”

Mrs. Harkey was subdued by the bitterness of accusation in Sarah’s face as well as by Emma’s condition. She hurried down the Coolly and sent a boy wildly galloping toward the town. Then she went home and sat down by her own hearthstone feeling deeply injured.

When the Doctor came he found a poor little boy baby crying in Sarah’s arms. It was Emma’s seventh child, but the ever sufficing mother-love looked from her eyes undimmed, limitless as the air.

“Will it live, Doctor? It’s so little,” she said, with a sigh.

“Oh, yes, I suppose so!” said the Doctor, as if its living were not entirely a blessing to itself or others. “Yes, I’ve seen lots of lusty children begin life like that. But,” he said to Sarah at the door, “she needs better care than the babe!”

“She’ll git it,” said Sarah, with deep solemnity, “if I have to move over here–and live.”