Uncle James was ill the next morning. Sara Lee went for the doctor, but
Anna's hour had come and he was with her. Late in the afternoon he came,
however looking a bit gray round the mouth with fatigue, but triumphant.
He had on these occasions always a sense of victory; even, in a way, a
feeling of being part of a great purpose. He talked at such times of the
race, as one may who is doing his best by it.
"Well," he said when Sara Lee opened the door, "it's a boy. Eight
pounds. Going to be red-headed, too." He chuckled.
"A boy!" said Sara Lee. "I--don't you bring any girl babies any more?"
The doctor put down his hat and glanced at her.
"Wanted a girl, to be named for you?"
"No. It's not that. It's only--" She checked herself. He wouldn't
understand. The race required girl babies. "I've put a blue bow on my
afghan. Pink is for boys," she said, and led the way upstairs.
Very simple and orderly was the small house, as simple and orderly as
Sara Lee's days in it. Time was to come when Sara Lee, having left it,
ached for it with every fiber of her body and her soul--for its bright
curtains and fresh paint, its regularity, its shining brasses and growing
plants, its very kitchen pans and green-and-white oilcloth. She was to
ache, too, for her friends--their small engrossing cares, their kindly
interest, their familiar faces.
Time was to come, too, when she came back, not to the little house, it
is true, but to her friends, to Anna and the others. But they had not
grown and Sara Lee had. And that is the story.
Uncle James died the next day. One moment he was there, an uneasy
figure, under the tulip quilt, and the next he had gone away entirely,
leaving a terrible quiet behind him. He had been the center of the
little house, a big and cheery and not over-orderly center. Followed
his going not only quiet, but a wretched tidiness. There was nothing
for Sara Lee to do but to think.
And, in the way of mourning women, things that Uncle James had said
which had passed unheeded came back to her. One of them was when he
had proposed to adopt a Belgian child, and Aunt Harriet had offered
horrified protest.
"All right," he had said. "Of course, if you feel that way about
it--! But I feel kind of mean, sometimes, sitting here doing nothing
when there's such a lot to be done."