walked, I think."

Chapter XXXIX: _Intermezzo_

Circumstances made it necessary that before the end of the month May
should inform old Mrs. Trewhella of Jenny's expected baby.

"What did she say?" Jenny inquired when the interview was over.

"She said she thought as much."

"What a liberty. Why? Nobody could tell to look at me. Or I hope not."

"Yes, but her!" commented May. "She's done nothing all her life only
make it her business to know. They're all like that down here. I noticed
that very soon about country people."

"What else did she say?" Jenny went on with for her unusual persistence.
She was not yet able to get rid of the idea that there was something
remarkable in Jenny Pearl going to have a baby. Not even the universal
atmosphere of fecundity which pervaded the farm could make this fact a
whit more ordinary.

"She didn't say much else," related May, not rising to the solemnity of
the announcement, the revolutionary and shattering reality of it.

"But she's going to tell him?" Jenny asked.

"That made her laugh."

"What did?"

"Her having to tell him."

"Why?" demanded Jenny indignantly.

"Well, you know they're funny down here. I tell you they don't think
nothing about having a baby. No more than picking a bunch of roses, you
might say."

This humdrum view of childbirth, although it might have relieved her
self-consciousness, was not at all welcome to Jenny. She could not bring
herself to believe that, when after so many years of speculation on this
very subject, she herself was going to have a baby, the world at large
would remain profoundly indifferent. She remembered how as a child she
had played with dolls, and how in the foggy weeks before Christmas she
had been wont to identify her anticipation with the emotional expectancy
of young motherhood. And now it was actually in the slow process of
happening, this event, happening, too, as far as could be judged,
without any violent or even mildly perceptible transfiguration, mental
or physical. Still it must not be forgotten that Mrs. Trewhella had
divined her condition. By what? Certainly not at present by her form or
complexion.

"I think it's your eyes," said May.

"What's the matter with them now?"

"They look different somehow. Sort of far-away look which you didn't use
to have."

"Shut up," scoffed Jenny, greatly embarrassed.

That evening when, after tea, Jenny leaned against the stone hedge under
a sunset of rosy cum