The poor, little wrinkled mouth was nestling against the mother-breast. Instinct was alive in the child. Joyce laughed. At first tremblingly, then shrilly. Suddenly she began to sing a lullaby, and the tune was interrupted by laughs and moans.
Higher and higher the fever rose. Isa Tate, beside herself with fright, screamed for help, and for days Jude Lauzoon's house was the meeting place of Life and Death; then Life triumphed, and people breathed relievedly.
"A homely young-un often makes handsome old bones," comforted Isa. Now that Joyce was creeping back from the dangers that had beset her, Isa felt a glow of pride and interest. She was an honourable diploma to Isa's skill as nurse. In the future, Mrs. Tate was to feel a new importance. She was assuming the airs of a woman who has learned the market value of her services. Tate was to reap the effect of this later.
"Oh! It doesn't matter much with boys," Joyce answered, indifferently. "A girl would have been different."
"That's a sensible way to look at it," Isa agreed. "I often think that a man with good looks has just that much temptation to be a bigger fool than what he otherwise would be. It's one agin 'em whichever way you take it. They don't _need_ looks. They gets what they wants, anyway, and if they are side-tracked by their countenances, it's ten to one they will get distracted in their aims, and make more trouble than usual.
"Now that I hark back, the only men as I can remember that amounted to enough to make you willing to overlook their cussedness, was men as had a handicap in looks.
"There was Pierre Laval's brother Damon. He was born with twelve toes, twelve fingers--two extry thumbs they was--and four front teeth.
"He certainly was the most audacious ugly young-un I ever set eyes on. I wasn't much more than a girl, to be sure, when I saw him first, but I went into yelling hysterics, and took to my bed. Pierre was handsome--and, you know how he ended? Damon, he gritted his teeth--and in his case he could do that early--and made up his mind to make good for his deficiencies--if you can say that 'bout one as had more rather than less than Nature generally bestows. Land! the learning that child was capable of absorbing! Hillcrest School just sunk into him like he was a sponge. When he got all he could over there, he just walked off as natural as could be, without a cent to his name--and they do say, so I've heard, that down the state they set an awful store by his knowledge of stars and moons and such-like. And Mick Falstar, cousin to Pete--"