Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/103

Rh better, insured the bearer from bad luck, if not actually bringing him good luck. Elizabeth wondered sometimes if her husband's complete subjection to his old nurse was not in a measure due to his superstitious fear of her.

Philip, the first born, had as a child been afraid of Aunt Peachy and the mother had gloried in the fact. As he grew beyond fear he had hated her as one might hate a rat or a snake. The other two children, Betsy and little Jo, had no fear of the old woman. They seemed to feel she was a huge joke, a person at whom one laughed and on whom children played tricks. Strange to say, the old woman rather enjoyed the role into which she was forced by the two younger children, who even made game of their father.

"Philip is coming home! My Philip!" kept singing in Elizabeth's heart as she prepared dinner for her husband on that morning in June. What difference did it make if Aunt Peachy did tell her to put more cracklings in the corn bread? What difference did anything make that was not connected with her Philip?

She longed for the return of her son, her first born, and she dreaded it, too—dreaded it for his sake. Life was not to be what she would have had it be for the boy. Not only did hard