There was not the least resentment cherished by the corpulent Mrs. Smith.  The girl’s answer confirmed her opinion from the first.  “She would not send for her husband, because there wasn’t no husband to send for.”  She mentioned her convictions to her husband and added she meant to write to sister Eliza that very night.

“Sister Eliza has an uncommon light hand with babies and that pore young thing’ll be hard pushed to pay the doctor, let alone a nurse.”

These essentially feminine details regarding the talents of Sister Eliza, did not especially interest Smith, who continued his favorite occupation—­or rather, joint occupations, of whittling and expectorating.  Nevertheless, the letter to Sister Eliza was written, and not a minute sooner than was necessary; for, the little soul that was to bring with it forgetfulness for all the agony through which its mother had lived during that awful year, came very soon after the arrival of Sister Eliza.

Anna had felt in those days of waiting that she could never again be happy; that for her “finis” had been written by the fates.  But, as she lay with the dark-haired baby on her breast, she found herself planning for the little girl’s future; even happy in the building of those heavenly air-castles that young mothers never weary of building.  She felt the necessity of growing strong so that she could work early and late, for baby must have everything, even if mother went without.  Sometimes a fleeting likeness to Sanderson would flit across the child’s face, and a spasm of pain would clutch at Anna’s heart, but she would forget it next moment in one of baby’s most heavenly smiles.

She could think of him now without a shudder; even a lingering remnant of tenderness would flare up in her heart when she remembered he was the baby’s father.  Perhaps he would see the child sometime, and her sweet baby ways would plead to him more eloquently than could all her words to right the wrong he had done, and so the days slipped by and the little mother was happy, after the long drawn out days of waiting and misery.  She would sing the baby to sleep in her low contralto voice, and feel that it mattered not whether the world smiled or frowned on her, so long as baby approved.

But this blessed state of affairs was not long to continue.  Anna, as she grew stronger, felt the necessity of seeking employment, but to this the baby proved a formidable obstacle.  No one would give a young woman, hampered with a child, work.  She would come back to the baby at night worn out in mind and body, after a day of fruitless searching.  These long trips of the little mother, with the consequent long absence and exhaustion on her return, did not improve the little one’s health, and almost before Anna realized it was ailing, the baby sickened and died.  It was her cruelest blow.  For the child’s sake she had taken up her interest in life, made plans; and was ready to work her fingers to the bone, but it was not to be and with the first falling of the clods on the little coffin, Anna felt the last ray of hope extinguished from her heart.