“Is dat you, son?”

Peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against Cissie; but he answered in a low tone that it was he.

“Whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?”

“Go to bed by it, Mother.”

“Well, bring hit back.”  She breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in the old four-poster.  As Peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts were all askew over her shapeless bulk.  Evidently, she had not been resting well.

Peter’s conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his courtship of Cissie, yet what could he do?  If he had wooed any other girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved.  It was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice.  A great sadness came over Peter.  He almost wished his mother would berate him, but she continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers.  As Peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it.

This time something in her tone alarmed Peter.  He paused in the doorway.

“Are you sick, Mother?” he asked.

The old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan.

“I—­I ain’t feelin’ so good.”

“What’s the matter, Mother?”

“My stomach, my—­” But at that moment her sentence changed to an inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of acute agony.

Peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming down her face.  He stared down at her.

“Mother, you are sick!  What can I do?” he cried, with a man’s helplessness.

She opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony passed.  There was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a rubber hot-water bottle.

“Fill it—­fum de kittle,” she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face.

Peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen.  There he found a brisk fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling.  It showed him, to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to herself until forced to bed.

The man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth, but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room.

He reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her writhing and sweating.  She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony.

Peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and started.

The old woman hunched up in bed.  With the penuriousness of her station and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, “Go tell Mars’ Renfrew,” but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.