She had her year-old baby on her knees and was
feeding him.
At the door of the old kitchen Jim grasped his sister-in-law by the
hand.
"Thot's right," he said. "Yo've joost coom in time for a cup o' tae.
T' misses is in there wi' t' lil uns."
He jerked his thumb toward his dining-room and led the way there.
Jim was not quite so alert and slender as he had been. He had lost his
savage grace. But he moved with his old directness and dignity, and he
still looked at you with his pathetic, mystic gaze.
Ally was contrite; she raised her face to her sister to be kissed. "I
can't get up," she said, "I'm feeding Baby. He'd howl if I left off."
"I'd let 'im howl. I'd spank him ef 'twas me," said Jim.
"He wouldn't, Gwenda."
"Ay, thot I would. An' 'e knows it, doos Johnny, t' yoong rascal."
Gwenda kissed the four children; Jimmy, and Gwendolen Alice, and
little Steven and the baby John. They lifted little sticky faces and
wiped them on Gwenda's face, and the happy din went on.
Ally didn't seem to mind it. She had grown plump and pink and rather
like Mary without her subtlety. She sat smiling, tranquil among the
cries of her offspring.
Jim turned three dogs out into the yard by way of discipline. He and
Ally tried to talk to each other across the tumult that remained. Now
and then Ally and the children talked to Gwenda. They told her that
the black and white cow had calved, and that the blue lupins had come
up in the garden, that the old sow had died, that Jenny, the chintz
cat, had kittened and that the lop-eared rabbit had a litter.
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