She had her youngest child with her.

“It was a terrible time before I could get up from the last one,” she said, “me that was around as smart as could be with the first.  I’m in living terror all the time for fear of what’s coming to me.  A mother has no business to die, that’s what I tell Tim.  Who’d look to the ones I have, with me taken?  I’m sharp with them at times, but God knows I’d die for ’em.  Blessed be, they understand my scolding, the dears.  It’s a cuff and a kiss with me, and I declare I don’t know which they like best.  They may howl when I hurt them, but they know it’s their own mother doing the cuffing, and in their hearts they don’t care.  It’s that way with cubs, ye see.  Mother bear knows how hard to box the ears of ’em.  But it’s truth I’m saying, Mrs. Fitzgerald; there’s little peace for women.  They don’t seem to belong to themselves at all, once they’re married.  It’s very happy you are, looking forward to your first, and you have my good wishes.  More than that, I’ll be proud to be of any service to you I can when your time comes—­it’s myself has had experience enough!  But, I tell you, the joy runs out when you’re slaving from morning to night, and then never getting the half done that you ought; and when you don’t know what it is to have two hours straight sleep at night; and maybe your husband scolding at the noise the young ones make.  Love ’em?  Of course, you love ’em.  But you can stand only so much.  After that, you’re done for.  And the agony of passing and leaving the children motherless is something I don’t like to think about.”

She bared her thin breast to her nursing babe, rocking slowly, her blue eyes straining into the future with its menace.

“But,” said Marna, blushing with embarrassment, “need there be such—­such a burden?  Don’t you think it right to—­to—­”

“Neither God nor man seems to have any mercy on me,” cried the little woman passionately.  “I say I’m in a trap—­that’s the truth of it.  If I was a selfish, bad mother, I could get out of it; if I was a mean wife, I could, too, I suppose.  I’ve tried to do what was right,—­what other people told me was right,—­and I pray it won’t kill me—­for I ought to live for the children’s sake.”

The child was whining because of lack of nourishment, and Mrs. Finn put it to the other breast, but it fared little better there.  Mrs. Dennison was looking on with her mild, benevolent aspect.

“My dear,” she said at last with an air of gentle authority, “I’m going out to get a bottle and good reliable infant food for that child.  You haven’t strength enough to more than keep yourself going, not to say anything about the baby.”

She took the child out of the woman’s arms and gave it to Kate.

“But I don’t think I ought to wean it when it’s so young,” cried Mrs. Finn, breaking down and wringing her thin hands with an immemorial Hibernian gesture.  “Tim wouldn’t like it, and his mother would rage at me.”