ast as you can. Wait a minute,' he
says. 'How old is your wife?'

"'F'm what she told me 'fore we was married,' I says, 'she's
thirty-one.'

"'Oh!' he says, raisin' his eyebrows. 'All right; hurry up, now,'

"I dusted around putty lively, an' inside of an hour was back with the
nurse, an 'jest after we got inside the door--" David paused
thoughtfully for a moment and then, lowering his tone a little, "jest as
we got inside the front door, a door upstairs opened an' I heard a
little 'Waa! waa!' like it was the leetlist kind of a new lamb--an' I
tell you," said David, with a little quaver in his voice, and looking
straight over the off horse's ears, "nothin' 't I ever heard before nor
since ever fetched me, right where I _lived_, as that did. The nurse,
she made a dive fer the stairs, wavin' me back with her hand, an'
I--wa'al--I went into the settin' room, an--wa'al--ne' mind.

"I dunno how long I set there list'nin' to 'em movin' 'round overhead,
an' wonderin' what was goin' on; but fin'ly I heard a step on the stair
an' I went out into the entry, an' it was Mis' Jones. 'How be they?' I
says.

"'We don't quite know yet,' she says. 'The little boy is a nice formed
little feller,' she says, 'an' them childern very often grow up, but he
is _very little_,' she says.

"'An' how 'bout my wife?' I says.

"'Wa'al,' she says, 'we don't know jest yet, but she is quiet now, an'
we'll hope fer the best. If you want me,' she says, 'I'll come any time,
night or day, but I must go now. The doctor will stay all night, an' the
nurse will stay till you c'n git some one to take her place,' an' she
went home, an'," declared David, "you've hearn tell of the 'salt of the
earth,' an' if that woman wa'n't more on't than a hoss c'n draw down
hill, the' ain't no such thing."

"Did they live?" asked John after a brief silence, conscious of the
bluntness of his question, but curious as to the sequel.

"The child did," replied David; "not to grow up, but till he was 'twixt
six an' seven; but my wife never left her bed, though she lived three
four weeks. She never seemed to take no int'rist in the little feller,
nor nothin' else much; but one day--it was Sunday, long to the last--she
seemed a little more chipper 'n usual. I was settin' with her, an' I
said to her how much better she seemed to be, tryin' to chirk her up.

"'No,' she says, 'I ain't goin' to live.'

"'Don't ye say that,' I says.

"'No,' she says, 'I ain't, an' I don't ca