.. a girl ... if it hadn't of lived ... if it had gone,
too, I wouldn't of wanted to live, either!..."
"That's why I'm workin' so hard, these days, with no lay-offs fer
huntin' or fishin' or anything."
* * * * *
The next day I learned more from Rachel of how Paul had agonized over
the death of his tiny wife ... "'she was that small you had a'most to
shake out the sheets to find her,' as Josh useter say," said Rachel
gravely and unhumorously ... and she told how the bereaved husband
savagely fought off all his womenfolk and insisted on mothering, for a
year, the baby whose birth had killed its mother.
"At last he's gittin' a little cheer in his face. But every so often the
gloomy fit comes over him like it did last night at supper. I keep
tellin' him it ain't Christian, with her dead two years a'ready--but he
won't listen ... he's got to have his fit out each time."
* * * * *
As if this had not been enough of the tragic, the next day when I asked
about Phoebe, Aunt Rachel started crying.
"Phoebe's gone, too," she sobbed.
"O, Aunt Rachel, I'm so sorry ... but I didn't know ... nobody told me."
"That's all right, Johnnie. Somehow it relieves me to talk about
Phoebe." She rose from her rocker, laid down her darning, and went to a
dresser in the next room. She came out again, holding forth to me a
picture .
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