The View from Castle Rock

stands at the foot of the bed. He has never looked on her in such a bed as this (a regular bed even though bolted to the wall). He is red with shame in front of the ladies, who have brought in the basin to wash her.
    “That’s it, is it?” he says, with a nod-not a glance-at the bundle beside her.
    She laughs in a vexed way and asks, what did he think it was? That is all it takes to knock him off his unsteady perch, puncture his pretense of being at ease. Now he stiffens up, even redder, doused with fire. It isn’t just what she has said, it is the whole scene, the smell of the infant and milk and blood, most of all the basin, the cloths, the women standing by, with their proper looks that can seem to a man both admonishing and full of derision.
    He can’t think of another word to say, so she has to tell him, with rough mercy, to get on his way, there’s work to do here.
    Some of the girls used to say that when you finally gave in and lay down with a man-even granting he was not the man of your first choice-it gave you a helpless but calm and even sweet feeling. Agnes does not recall that she felt that with Andrew. All she felt was that he was an honest lad and the one that she needed in her circumstances, and that it would never occur to him to run off and leave her.

    Walter has continued to go to the same private place to write in his book and nobody has caught him there. Except the girl, of course. But things are even now with her. One day he arrived at the place and she was there before him, skipping with a red-tasselled rope. When she saw him she stopped, out of breath. And no sooner did she catch her breath but she began to cough, so that it was several minutes before she could speak. She sank down against the pile of canvas that concealed the spot, flushed and her eyes full of bright tears from the coughing. He simply stood and watched her, alarmed at this fit but not knowing what to do.
    “Do you want me to fetch one of the ladies?”
    He is on speaking terms with the Edinburgh women now, on account of Agnes. They take a kind interest in the mother and baby and Mary and Young James, and think that the old father is comical. They are also amused by Andrew and Walter, who seem to them so bashful. Walter is actually not so tongue-tied as Andrew is, but this business of humans giving birth (though he is used to it with sheep) fills him with dismay or outright disgust. Agnes has lost a great part of her sullen allure because of it. (As happened before, when she gave birth to Young James. But then, gradually, her offending powers returned. He thinks that unlikely to happen again. He has seen more of the world now, and on board this ship he has seen more of women.)
    The coughing girl is shaking her curly head violently.
    “I don’t want them,” she says, when she can gasp the words out. “I have never told anybody you come here. So you mustn’t tell anybody about me.”
    “Well you are here by rights.”
    She shakes her head again and gestures for him to wait till she can speak more easily.
    “I mean that you saw me skipping. My father hid my skipping rope but I found where he hid it-but he doesn’t know that.”
    “It isn’t the Sabbath,” Walter says reasonably. “So what is wrong with you skipping?”
    “How do I know?” she says, regaining her saucy tone. “Perhaps he thinks I am too old for it. Will you swear not to tell anyone?” She holds up her forefingers to make a cross. The gesture is innocent, he knows, but nevertheless he is shocked, knowing how some people might look at it.
    But he says that he is willing to swear.
    “I swear too,” she says. “I won’t tell anyone you come here.”
    After saying this quite solemnly, she makes a face.
    “Though I was not going to tell about you anyway.”
    What a queer self-important little thing she is. She speaks only of her father, so he thinks it must be she has no brothers or sisters and-like himself-no mother. That condition has probably made her both spoiled and lonely.

    Following this swearing, the girl-her name is Nettie-becomes a frequent visitor when Walter intends to write in his book. She always says that she does not want to disturb him but after keeping ostentatiously quiet for about five minutes she will interrupt him with some question about his life or bit of information about hers. It is true that she is motherless and an only child and she has never even been to school. She talks most about her pets-those dead and those