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Hapsy? George? Lydia? Jimmy? No, Cornelia and her features were swollen and full of little puddles. “They’re coming, darling, they’ll all be here soon.” Go wash your face, child, you look funny.

Instead of obeying, Cornelia knelt down and put her head on the pillow. She seemed to be talking but there was no sound. “Well, are you tongue-tied? Whose birthday is it? Are you going to give a party?”

Cornelia’s mouth moved urgently in strange shapes. “Don’t do that, you bother me, daughter.”

“Oh, no, Mother. Oh, no.”

Nonsense. It was strange about children. They disputed your every word. “No what, Cornelia?”

“Here’s Doctor Harry.”

“I won’t see that boy again. He just left five minutes ago.”

“That was this morning, Mother. It’s night now. Here’s the nurse.”

“This is Doctor Harry, Mrs. Weatherall. I never saw you so young and happy!”

“Ah, I’ll never be young again—but I’d be happy if they’d let me lie in peace and get rested.”

She thought she spoke up loudly, but no one answered. A warm weight on her forehead, a warm bracelet on her wrist, and a breeze went on whispering, trying to tell her something. A shuffle of leaves in the everlasting hand of God. He blew on them and they danced and rattled. “Mother, don’t mind, we’re going to give you a little hypodermic.” “Look here, daughter, how do ants get in this bed? I saw sugar ants yesterday.” Did you send for Hapsy too?

It was Hapsy she really wanted. She had to go a long way back through a great many rooms to find Hapsy standing with a baby on her arm. She seemed to herself to be Hapsy also, and the baby on Hapsy’s arm was Hapsy and himself and herself, all at once, and there was no surprise in the meeting. Then Hapsy melted from within and turned flimsy as gray gauze and the baby was a gauzy shadow, and Hapsy came up close and said, “I thought you’d never come,” and looked at her very searchingly and said, “You haven’t changed a bit!” They leaned forward to kiss, when Cornelia began whispering from a long way off, “Oh, is there anything you want to tell me? Is there anything I can do for you?”

Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would like to see George. I want you to find George. Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him. I want him to know I had my husband just the same and my children and my house like any other woman. A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Better than I hoped for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more. Oh, no, oh, God, no, there something else beside the house and the man and the children. . Oh, surely they were not all? What was it? Something not given back. Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and the agony was unbelievable: Yes, John, get the doctor now, no more talk, my time has come.

When this one was born it should be the last. The last. It should have been born first, for it was the one she truly wanted. Everything came in good time. Nothing left out, left over. She was strong, in three days she would be as well as ever. Better. A woman needed milk in her to have her full health.

“Mother, do you hear me?”

“I’ve been telling you—”

“Mother, Father Connolly’s here.”