“She’s worn out, that’s the matter,” explained Abel, while they stopped to dry themselves in the kitchen.

“You go straight upstairs to bed, Judy,” said Sarah, “an’ I’ll send you up a cup of gruel by Abel.  You oughtn’t to have gone streakin’ out in this rain, an’ it’s natural that it should have upset you.”

“It wasn’t the rain,” replied Judy, and the instant afterwards, she burst into tears and ran out of the room before they could stop her.

“I declar’, I never saw anybody carry on so in my life,” observed Sarah.

Abel glanced at her with a perplexed and anxious frown on his brow.  “You ought to be patient with her condition,” he said.  His own patience was inexhaustible, and its root, as Blossom had suspected, lay in his remorseful indifference.  With Molly he had not been patient, but he had loved her.

“Don’t talk to me about patience,” rejoined Sarah, “haven’t I had nine an’ lost six?”

She was entirely without the sentiment which her son felt regarding the physical function of motherhood, for like the majority of sentiments, it had worn thin when it had been stretched over a continual repetition of facts.  To Abel the mystery was still shrouded in a veil of sympathy, and was hardly to be thought of without tenderness.  But his solicitude merely nettled Sarah.  Nobody had ever “carried on” over her when she had had her nine.

“Have you said anything sharp to her to-day, mother?” he inquired suspiciously, after a minute.

“You know I ain’t, Abel.  She left a dirty glass in the dairy an’ I never so much as mentioned it.  Did Mr. Mullen complain of her leavin’ off mission work?”

“Why, of course not.  He talked to us only a few minutes and he seemed absent-minded.  He’s had a good call somewhere in the North, and he told us that he had prayed over it unceasingly and he believed that the Lord was directing him to larger fields.”

“Did Judy hear that?”

“Yes, he told us both.”

Sarah was stirring the gruel, and she appeared so absorbed in her task that the remark she let fall a minute later bore presumably no relation to the conversation.

“I sometimes think men ain’t got any mo’ sense than an unborn babe!” she observed.

Taking the cup from her hands, Abel went up the little staircase to the bedroom, where Judy stood before the bureau, with a long black-headed hat pin in her hand.  She had evidently not begun to undress, for her hat was still on her head, and under the heavy shadow of the brim her eyes looked back at her husband with an accusing and hostile expression.

“Drink this, Judy, while it is hot,” he said kindly, placing the cup on the bureau.

“I don’t want it,” she answered, and her voice sounded as if she were ready to burst again into tears.

“Are you sick?”

“No.”

“I’m going to sleep in the attic.  Call me if you want anything.”