The Loving Spirit Read Online Free PDF Page A

there, they don’t give a thought to the sinful world.’
    The wind blew around the house, sighing and tapping against the window pane, crying mournfully like a lost thing. The candles quivered and shuddered. Then the rain mingled with the wind, and the night air was filled with weeping and sorrow. Away below the cliff the sea thundered against the rocks. The trees were bent back with the force of the wind, and from the branches fell the last wet leaves.
    Thomas drew the curtains close, and pulled the rocking chair nearer to the fire.
    ‘Keep warm, love, and don’t heed the wind an’ the rain.’ Janet wrapped her shawl about her shoulders, and watched the firelight dance and flicker.
    ‘I’ll not bide in Heaven, nor rest here in my grave. My spirit will linger with the ones I love - an’ when they’re sorrowful and feared in themselves, I’ll come to them; and God Himself won’t keep me.’
    Thomas closed the Bible with a sigh, and put it away on its shelf in the corner.
    He must not chide Janet for her words, for women had queer notions at times like these.
    He picked up the little sock that had fallen to the floor. ‘’Tes terrible small, Janie,’ he said anxiously. ‘Will the lad’s foot be no bigger than that?’

3
     
     
    T he long winter months passed slowly, Christmas came and went, and now the first breath of spring could be felt in the air. The sharp white frosts were no longer so hard in the mornings, and the very branches of the trees spread themselves into the sky, unfolding the tight round buds.
    White lambs frisked in the fields above Plyn, and in the low sheltered places grew the pale primroses.
    At Ivy House there was a bright atmosphere of mystery and expectation, for Janet Coombe was near her time.
    Her mother was ever in and out of the place, with her fussy bustling air, lending a hand to the cooking and the cleaning to save her daughter work.Thomas’s manner was sharp and impatient, giving hard words now and then to the men at the yard, and being short even to his good-natured, muddle-headed uncle.
    They forgave him for it all the same, for these were anxious nervous moments for the young man.
    Janet herself watched the fuss and commotion with a smile on her lips, and a laughing, wondering look in her eyes.
    She didn’t feel ill at all; it was only natural that the baby should come to her in the spring of the year.
    Why, many was the time she’d helped carry the new-born lambs down from the fields, over to Polmear Farm; and seen the patient wounded eyes of the cows as they licked their sturdy little frightened calves, they shaking on their four legs.
    It seemed to her that there was nothing more simple and homely than the birth of a young thing, whether it was a child in a cottage or a lamb on the hills. It was all the same in the end. The lambs cried for food and comfort, and nestled against the sheep who gave it them, while a woman clasped her baby to her breast. But she could not for the life of her see the reason for these nods and muttered whispers, and the tying of ribbons on the cradle in the bedroom, and her mother’s meaning smile at inquisitive neighbours calling, and Thomas’s agonized pleading that she should lie down and rest herself.
    ‘I wish you’d away, all of you, and go about your business and let me be. I’m not feared o’ pain nor trouble, and if I had my way I’d leave you to your ribbon-tyin’, and soup-makin’ and take myself to the quiet fields to have my baby, I would, ’midst the cattle and the sheep who’d understand.’
    ‘Merciful Lord, if it’s that you’re thinkin’ of, then bed’s the place for you, and hasty too,’ cried her mother, and she packed poor Janet upstairs without more ado.
    Two days later, on 5 March, Janet’s son Samuel was born. ‘’Twas a beautiful confinement,’ declared old Mrs Coombe to the neighbours. ‘Easier an’ better than Doctor an’ I’d ever thought. She bore it wonderful, the dear brave gal that she