For a few days she laboured tirelessly with it:  then she tired of it, and flung it aside.  Other things absorbed her attention.

First came the expected letter from Wallace.  Martie’s hand shook as she took it from the postman.  Now she would know—­now she would know!  Whatever the news, the suspense was over.

Perhaps the hardest moment of the hard weeks was when she realized that the tension was not snapped, after all.  Wallace wrote affectionately, but with maddening vagueness.  He missed his girl, he had a rotten cold, he was not working now.  Golda was raising hell.  He did not believe half that she said, but he had written to his uncle, who advised him to go to Portland, and investigate the matter there.  So unless Martie heard to the contrary he would probably go north this week.  Anyway, Martie had better stay where she was, and not worry.

Not worry!  It became a marvel to Martie that life could go on for any one while her own future was so frightfully uncertain.  She was going to have a baby, and she was not married—­that was the summary of the situation.  It was like something in a book, only worse than any book that she had ever read.  Sometimes she felt as if her brain were being affected by the sheer horror of it.  Sometimes, Sally noticed, Martie fell into such deep brooding that she neither heard nor saw what went on about her.  Her mind was in a continual fever; she was exhausted with fruitless hoping and unavailing endurance.

At the end of a hot, endless April day, into the darkness of Sally’s disordered bedroom, came life.  A little hemstitched blanket had been made ready for the baby; it seemed to Martie’s frightened heart nothing short of a miracle when Sally’s crying daughter was actually wrapped in it.  Martie had travelled a long road since the placid spring afternoon when they had made that blanket.

But the strain and fright were over now; Sally lay at peace, her eyes shut in a white face.  The tears dried on Martie’s cheeks; Mrs. Hawkes and Dr. Ben were even laughing as they consulted and worked together.  Martie took the baby down to the kitchen for her bath, and it seemed strange to her that the dried peaches Sally had set on the stove that morning were still placidly simmering in their saucepan.

For a day or two everything was unreal, the smoke of battle and the shadow of death still hung over the little household.  Gradually, the air cleared.  Joe and Martie ate the deluge of layer cakes and apple pies—­debated over details.  Joe’s mother came in to bathe the baby and Sally did nothing but laugh and eat and sleep.  She called her first-born Elizabeth, for her mother; and sometimes the sisters wondered if Ma and Lydia ever talked about the first baby, and ever longed to see her first tiny charms.

The event shook Martie from her brooding, and brought her the first real happiness she had known since the terrible morning of Golda’s appearance.  She and Sally found the care of the baby only a delight, and disputed for the privilege of bathing and dressing her.