"There's enough to
make me live until I sign that paper, and make Henry Peters sign
it, and send Mr. Thomlins to you with it and the baby. I can do
that, because I'm going to!"
Ten days later she did exactly what she had said she would. Then
she turned her face to the wall and went into a convulsion out of
which she never came. While the Peters family refused Kate's plea
to lay Polly beside her grandmother, and laid her in their family
lot, Kate, moaning dumbly, sat clasping a tiny red girl in her
arms. Adam drove to Hartley to deposit one more paper, the most
precious of all, in the safety deposit box.
Kate and Adam mourned too deeply to talk about it. They went
about their daily rounds silently, each busy with regrets and self
investigations. They watched each other carefully, were kinder
than they ever had been to everyone they came in contact with; the
baby they frankly adored. Kate had reared her own children with
small misgivings, quite casually, in fact; but her heart was torn
to the depths about this baby. Life never would be even what it
had been before Polly left them, for into her going there entered
an element of self-reproach and continual self-condemnation.
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