ified until she had started to feed it
again, and so she resumed her seat on the grass.

"I didn't know you were back," she said, holding the baby up to her.
"Are you here for long?"

He did not answer immediately. He had not yet completely realised that
this was Sheila whom he had been eager to marry, and then when he
understood at last that this indeed was she, something inside him kept
exclaiming, "But she's got a baby!" and he wondered why she was feeding
it.

"Are you married, Sheila?" he said.

She laughed at him, and answered, "That's a quare question to be askin',
an' me with this in my arms!" She looked at the baby as she spoke.

"I didn't know you were married," he replied. "I was coming up to the
farm to see you!"

"I've been married this year past," she said.

"I didn't know," he murmured. "No one told me!..."

And suddenly he saw that her face was coarser than it had been when he
loved her. Her hair was tied untidily about her head, and he could see
that her hands, as she held the child, were rough and red, and that her
nails were broken and misshapen. Her boots were loosely laced, and she
seemed to be sprawling....

"I'm all throughother," she said, as if she realised what was in his
mind and was anxious to excuse herself to him. "This wee tory hardly
gives me a minute's peace, an' my aunt's not so well as she was!"

He nodded his head, but did not speak.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" he asked after a while.

"It's a boy," she said, "an' the very image of his da. He's a lovely
child, Henry. Just look at him!"

He came nearer to her and looked at the baby who had his little fingers
at her breast as if he would prevent her from taking it from him. The
child, still sucking, looked up at him with greedy-sleepy eyes.

"Isn't he a gran' wee fella?" she went on, eyeing her son proudly.

"Whom did you marry?" he asked.

"You know him well," she answered. "Peter Logan that used to keep the
forge ... that's who I married. D'ye mind the way he could bend a bar of
iron with his two hands?..."

Henry remembered. "Doesn't he keep the forge now?" he asked.

"No, he sold it to Dan McKittrick when he married me. We needed a man on
the farm, an' he's gran' at it. There isn't a one in the place can bate
him at the reapin', an' you should see the long, straight furrows he can
plough. The child's the image of him, an' I declare by the way he's
tuggin' at me ... be quit, will you, you wee tory, an' not be hurt