"And if your cousin down South is so determined to have you at her
wedding, why, go! Leave your baby with your mother; she's older in the
business than you are."

But the cousin's wedding was weeks away yet, and Isabel clung to her wee
treasure, and temporized with the aunts and cousins in the South and
with her mother and Ruth at home, until the doctor spoke again.

"Let's see," he said to Arthur. "This is November, baby's five months
old. Send your wife away. Put her out! Something's killing her by
inches, and I believe it's just care o' the nest. We must drive her off
it, as I drove Leonard Byington off,--which, you remember, you, quietly,
were the first to suggest to me to do.... Coming back, you
say,--Byington? Yes, but only for a day or two,--election time."

It did not occur to the doctor that Arthur was secretly keeping his wife
from going anywhere.

The night Leonard came home the old pond, for the first time in the
season, froze over, and through Giles's activities it was arranged next
day that Martin Kelly, Sarah Stebbens, Minnie, and he should go down
there after supper and skate by the light of fagot fires made out on the
ice. Giles piled the fagots; but at a late moment, to the disgust of
Giles and Minnie, the older pair pitilessly changed their minds, and
decided they were too old to make such nincompoops of themselves. Minnie
would not go without Sarah, for Minnie was up to her pretty eyebrows in
love with Giles, as well as immensely correct; and so there, as it
seemed, was the end of that.