Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/124

 looking at Mabelle she said in a low voice, "I don't have to see the doctor to find out why."

Mabelle's rocking-chair paused in its monotonous bobbing. "You don't mean to say you've been doing sinful things to prevent it—you, Naomi Downes, a missionary!"

Naomi, wringing her hands, said, "No, I don't know what you mean. I haven't been doing sinful things. . . . I . . . we couldn't have had a baby . . . we've—we've never lived together."

The rocking-chair still remained quiescent, a posed symbol of Mabelle's shocked astonishment. "Well, I don't know what you mean. But it seems sinful to me if a man and wife don't live together. What does the Bible say? Take unto yourself a wife and multiply. Look at all the begats."

Naomi burst out, "We meant to . . . some day. Only we couldn't out there in Africa."

"Well, you ought to have taken a chance." Mabelle seemed outraged and angry for the first time in all Naomi's friendship with her, and it was only after a long time that the rocking-chair began once more its unending motion. The baby, startled by a sudden cessation of the soothing motion, set up a cry and Mabelle, loosening ten of the twenty-one buttons that held together her straining basque, quieted it at once.

"What do you expect?" asked Mabelle rhetorically. "What do you expect? A man isn't going on courting forever for nothing—especially after he's married to a woman. He'll get tired after a while. Philip's a man like any other man. He's not going on forever like this. He isn't that kind. Any woman can tell in a glance—and he's the kind that can wrap a woman