unno what it's called, but if that
other one gets the better o' me, mebbe that's what I shall do."

Myron held her hand now with an involuntary fervor of his own, not so
much because she bade him, but with the purpose of restraining her. An
hour passed, and her blue eyes were fixed upon him with the same
imploring force. He fidgeted, and at last longed childishly to see them
wink.

"Don't you want to see the doctor?" he ventured.

"No," said Caddie, in the same tone of wild asseveration. "Doctors won't
do me a mite o' good. Besides, doctors know all about it, and they'd see
what was to pay, and they'd send me off to some kind of a hospital, and
there'd be a pretty bill o' costs."

"I don't believe a word of it," Myron ventured, with a grasp at mental
liberty. He essayed, at the same time, to draw away his hand, but Caddie
seemed to fix him with a sharper eye-gleam, and he forbore.

"There's Hermie," she said. "I hear him in the shed, rattlin' round
amongst the tools. You call him in here, and when he's here, you tell
him he's goin' to have the Turnbull place, and have it now. Myron, you
tell him."

Myron made a slight involuntary movement in his chair, as if he were
about to rise and carry out her mandate; but he settled back again, and
Herman, having selected the tool he wanted, went off through the shed
and, as they both knew, down the garden-path.

The forenoon went on in a strange silence, save for the sound of the
birds, and an occasional voice of neighbors calling to Herman as they
passed. Myron had still that sickening sense of illness in the house.
The breakfast dishes were, he knew, untouched upon the table. The cat
came in, looked incidentally at the sofa as if she were accustomed to
occupy it at that particular hour, and walked out again. Myron drew
forth his watch, and looked at it with a stealthiness he could not
explain.

"Why," said he, with a simulated wonder, "it's nigh half after eleven.
Hadn't you better see about gettin' dinner?"

"I ain't a-goin' to get any dinner," his wife responded. "I don't know
as I shall ever get dinners any more. Myron, it's comin' up in me. I
feel it." She dropped his hand and rose to a sitting posture, and for a
moment, yielding to the physical relief of the broken clasp, he leaned
back in his chair and drew a hearty breath.

"Myron," said his wife. There was something mandatory in her voice, and
he came upright again. "Now I'm goin' to do it. I don't know what