It may
be that like her father she had dismissed from her mind all thoughts of him
as one who would continue to help solve the mechanical problems of his age.
Thoughts of his continued success had never meant much to her, but during
the evening something had happened to Clara and she wanted to tell him
about it, to take him into the joy of it. Their first child had been a girl
and she was sure the next would be a man child. "I felt him to-night," she
said, when they had got to the place by the fence and saw below the lights
of the town. "I felt him to-night," she said again, "and oh, he was strong!
He kicked like anything. I am sure this time it's a boy."
For perhaps ten minutes Clara and Hugh stood by the fence. The disease of
thinking that was making Hugh useless for the work of his age had swept
away many old things within him and he was not self-conscious in the
presence of his woman. When she told him of the struggle of the man of
another generation, striving to be born he put his arm about her and held
her close against his long body. For a time they stood in silence, and then
started to return to the house and sleep. As they went past the barns and
the bunkhouse where several men now slept they heard, as though coming out
of the past, the loud snoring of the rapidly ageing farm hand, Jim Priest,
and then above that sound and above the sound of the animals stirring in
the barns arose another sound, a sound shrill and intense, greetings
perhaps to an unborn Hugh McVey.
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