Then one morning, never to be forgotten, Martha thought to herself at the breakfast table, “I’ll tell them as soon as breakfast is over.”

But she didn’t.

She thought, “I’ll take them into the garden and tell them there—­”

But though she took them into the garden, somehow she couldn’t tell them there.

“As soon as we get back into the house,” she said, “I’ll tell them.”

Even then the words didn’t come, and Martha sat looking out of the window so quietly and yet with such a look of mingled fear and pride and exaltation on her face, that Cordelia suddenly seemed to divine it.

“Oh, Martha,” she cried.  “Do you—­do you—­do you really think—­”

Miss Patty looked up, too—­stricken breathless all in a moment—­and quicker than I can tell it, the three of them had their arms around each other, and tears and smiles and kisses were blended—­quite in the immemorial manner.

CHAPTER III

“We must start sewing,” said Miss Cordelia.

So they started sewing, Martha and the two maiden sisters, every stitch a hope, every seam the dream of a young life’s journey.

“We must think beautiful thoughts,” spoke up Miss Patty another day.

So while they sewed, sometimes one and sometimes another read poetry, and sometimes they read the Psalms, especially the Twenty-third, and sometimes Martha played the Melody in F, or the Shower of Stars or the Cinquieme Nocturne.

“We must think brave thoughts, too,” said Miss Cordelia.

So after that, whenever one of them came to a stirring editorial in a newspaper, or a rousing passage in a book, it was put on one side to be read at their daily sewing bee; and when these failed they read Barbara Fritchie, or Patrick Henry, or Horatio at the Bridge.

“Do you notice how much better Josiah is looking!” whispered Miss Cordelia to her sister one evening.

“A different man entirely,” proudly nodded Miss Patty.  “I heard him speaking yesterday about an addition to the factory—­”

“I suppose it’s because he’s living in the future now—­”

“Instead of in the past.  But I do wish he wouldn’t be quite so sure that it’s going to be a boy.  I’m afraid sometimes—­that perhaps he won’t like it—­if it’s a girl—­”

They had grown beautiful as they spoke, but now they looked at each other in silence, the same fear in both their glances.

“Oh, Cordelia,” suddenly spoke Miss Patty.  “Suppose it is a girl—!”

“Hush, dear.  Remember, we must have brave thoughts.  And even if the first one is a girl, there’ll be plenty of time for a boy—­”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Miss Patty.

They smiled at each other in concert, and a faint touch of colour arose to Miss Cordelia’s slightly withered cheeks.

“Do you know,” she said, hesitating, smiling—­yes, and thrilling a little, too—­“we’ve had so much to do with bringing it about, that somehow I feel as though it’s going to be my baby—­”