A thing I worked
years to suppress in me has come back. I have been hating myself and the
baby. For days I have been fighting the feeling in me, and now it has come
out and perhaps you have begun hating me. Can you love me again? Will you
ever forget the meanness and the cheapness of it? You and poor innocent
Frank--Oh, Sam, the devil was in me!"
Reaching down, Sam took her into his arms and cuddled her like a child. A
story he had heard of the vagaries of women at such times came back to him
and was as a light illuminating the darkness of his mind.
"I understand now," he said. "It is a part of the burden you carry for us
both."
For some weeks after the outbreak at the carriage door events ran smoothly
in the McPherson house. One day as he stood in the stable door Frank came
round the corner of the house and, looking up sheepishly from under his
cap, said to Sam: "I understand about the missus. It is the baby coming.
We have had four of them at our house," and Sam, nodding his head, turned
and began talking rapidly of his plans to replace the carriages with
automobiles.
But in the house, in spite of the clearing up of the matter of Sue's
ugliness at the Grovers, a subtle change had taken place in the
relationship of the two.
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