thinkin' he'll be comin' soon."

"Ay; you'll not have t' wait much longer."

"I'm not mindin' _that_," said she, "for I'm used t' waitin'."

The doctor came in from the sea at evening--when the wind had freshened
to a gale, blowing bitter cold. He had been for three days and nights
fighting without sleep for the life of that mother of seven--and had
won! Ay, she had pulled through; she was now resting in the practiced
care of the Cuddy Cove women, whose knowledge of such things had been
generously increased. The ragged, sturdy seven still had a mother to
love and counsel them. The Cuddy Cove men spoke reverently of the deed
and the man who had done it. Tired? The doctor laughed. Not he! Why, he
had been asleep under a tarpaulin all the way from Cuddy Cove! And
Skipper Elisha Timbertight had handled the skiff in the high seas so
cleverly, so tenderly, so watchfully--what a marvellous hand it
was!--that the man under the tarpaulin had not been awakened until the
nose of the boat touched the wharf piles. But the doctor was hollow-eyed
and hoarse, staggering of weariness, but cheerfully smiling, as he went
up the path to talk with the woman from Bowsprit Head.

"You are waiting for me?" he asked.

She was frightened--by his accent, his soft voice, his gentle manner, to
which the women of our coast are not used. But she managed to stammer
that her baby was sick.

"'Tis his throat," she added.

The child was noisily fighting for breath. He gasped, writhed in her
lap, struggled desperately for air, and, at last, lay panting. She
exposed him to the doctor's gaze--a dull-eyed, scrawny, ugly babe: such
as mothers wish to hide from sight.

"He've always been like that," she said. "He's wonderful sick. I've
fetched un here t' be cured."

"A pretty child," said the doctor.

'Twas a wondrous kind lie--told with such perfect dissimulation that it
carried the conviction of truth.

"What say?" she asked, leaning forward.

"A pretty child," the doctor repeated, very distinctly.

"They don't say that t' Bowsprit Head, zur."

"Well--_I_ say it!"

"I'll tell un so!" she exclaimed, joyfully. "I'll tell un you said so,
zur, when I gets back t' Bowsprit Head. For nobody--nobody, zur--ever
said that afore--about my baby!"

The child stirred and complained. She lifted him from her lap--rocked
him--hushed him--drew him close, rocking him all the time.

"Have you another?"

"No, zur; 'tis me first."

"And does he talk?" t