Page 61 - MailOrderBrideFlipBook

they were married, after they talked of having children, Jim had added on another bedroom for a child. After years with no children, the room became storage. Jim was happy and felt quite fulfilled with just Mary, but he knew how much she ached for a child. They had been married more than ten years, and Jim had given up hope of having children, when, one day, he came home, and Mary told him she thought she might be pregnant. He could remember how the excitement built in his heart as time went on. When the event drew near, the men teased him more. He made anyone and everyone that came to the camp report on how Mary was doing. He had people checking on her every hour of the day while he was at work. He thought the day would never come. The time finally arrived, and it wasn’t day, but night. In the dark of a cool, spring night, he was rushing off to get Agnes, who was, herself, now a young bride and married to Whitman. She was a nurse and a midwife. She and Whitman came right away. Whitman sat drinking tea, while Jim paced back and forth. Whitman was always calm, and Jim could remember how it annoyed him that time. When he finally heard the baby cry, he could stand it no longer and rushed into the bedroom. Agnes assured him that the mother and baby were fine, and shooed him back out of the room. From then on, Jim, Mary, and little Jimmy spent every free minute together. He would take them fishing with him almost every Saturday. Jimmy could cast his own pole before he was three, and he was baiting his own hook long before that. 58