“Don’t fuss”. Mary muttered breathlessly, settling heavily in the high backed, wooden chair.
Emma jumped down from the table to kneel on the red tiled floor and taking her mother’s hand in hers, peered nervously up into her face. “Does tha want to lie down. Shall I cross the yard and fetch Mrs Miller?”
Her mother smiled warmly. “No child. I’m fine. The barn’s stretching is all”. Gently picking up her daughters hand she placed it on the swelling. “Here feel…can you feel it?”
Emma grinned as the swelling shifted beneath her fingers. “I can feel it!” she shrieked. “I can feel it moving”.
As the kitchen door was pushed open, Mary rose to her feet unsteadily, watching as her son took off his cap and hung it on a peg on the brown emulsioned wall. William was tall for his age. Although still only thirteen, he looked every bit the young man and Mary was intensly proud of him. Soon he would finish his schooling and part-time work at a grocers making deliveries on a bicycle and would bring home a full-time wage packet. Her face softened as she gazed on the handsome young features that were so like the ones she had gazed into some 15 years before. Like his father, he was stubborn and determined, but was capable of a tenderness that the years of hopeless toil had eroded in his father.