“You want to be quiet now, Rachel, and try to get a nap. You’ll feel different when you’ve seen your baby. Shut your eyes now and mebbe you’ll drop off, while I go and get you some gruel.”
“I hate gruel!” said Rachel; “I won’t touch it, Mis’ Peace, I tell you!”
Mother Peace came out quietly and drew the door to. Seeing Anne she nodded, and beckoned her to follow down-stairs, but did not speak till she had gained the kitchen.
“Anne,” she said. “You needn’t tell me. There’s mistakes made up yonder sometimes same as other places; maybe some of the angels is young and careless. But that baby’ll soon find out who its real mother is, you see if it don’t.”
“Why, Mother Peace,” said Anne, “how you talk!”
“Some one has to talk!” said her mother kindly. “You are little better than a dumb image, Anne, when a person wants to free her mind. You might stir this gruel if you’ve a mind to, while I go up and take a look at those two lambs, and I don’t mean Rachel Merion by neither one of ‘em.”
Strange and terrible as it seems, Rachel did not grow fond of her baby. She had made up her mouth, she said, for a boy; she had never liked girl babies, and she wasn’t going to pretend that she did.
“You needn’t look like that, Grandmother, as if you expected the sky to fall on me. I’m one that isn’t afraid to say what I think, and I think it’s real mean, so now, and I never shall think anything else.”
Manuel too was greatly disappointed. Rachel had been so absolutely sure, that he too had counted on the promised boy, feeling somehow that she must know. They had named the child—Orlando Harold was to be his name. He was to have Manuel’s eyes and Rachel’s hair, and was to be President or Major-General; this was the only point that was not settled. And now—still Manuel felt a stirring at his heart, when he saw the little fair creature in Grandmother’s arms. “After all, there have to be girls!” he said.
“I didn’t have to have one,” said Rachel, flouncing away from him.
Mother Peace, while she nursed Rachel faithfully and sturdily, grew more and more rigid with indignation.
“Take this broth!” she would say. “Yes, you will; take every sup of it; there! If ’twasn’t for my living duty I’d put whole peppercorns into it, Rachel Merion. Such actions! what the Lord was thinking of I don’t know.” For Rachel was not nursing the baby; said she could not, she should die.