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Mattresses were leaning against the walls to make more room for the day’s activities. In a corner, near one of the two windows letting in a little light, Grace was asleep in a large rush basket. Her face was very flushed.
    â€œMissus, Grace is worse. I’m afraid she will die. The doctor came, but he couldn’t tell us she will get better. Agrippa has gone for the priest.”
    â€œOh, Mary, I’m so sorry. But she’s sleeping—that’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
    â€œShe can’t eat or drink, Missus. Nothing stays down. She will die.”
    Flora unpacked her basket, putting the chicken in its wrap of greaseproof paper on the table. She unfolded the nightdress and bonnet and draped them over the back of a chair. Then she stood, holding the flannel cloth in her hands, turning it over and over. She was remembering the sweet smell of Grace as she carried her around the garden after her bath, the soft skin of her shoulders, her voice. The weight of Grace in Flora’s arms had been something she had waited for all her life; that was how it had felt. But this was Grace’s home, her mother, her family. Their knowledge of her was much more profound than an afternoon, a single bath.
    â€œAre there dishes I could wash for you, Mary?”
    â€œNo need, Missus. My mother will help.”
    Agrippa came into the cabin, saying that the priest was on his way. If he was surprised to see Flora, he gave no sign and poured himself a cup of tea, indicating the pot to the women. Both of them nodded and accepted the mugs he handed to them. Putting his own cup down, he took Mary in his arms and held her while her body shook. She made no sound and quite soon pushed her husband away and finished her tea. Flora was not accustomed to intimacy between couples—her own parents never kissed, only embraced on Christmas morning when her father handed her mother the customary jeweller’s box from London—and was moved to tears herself. She excused herself, putting her mug by the basin on the table. Outside, laundry from the household was spread over bushes near the water, clematis unfolding its white blossoms, serviceberry, chokecherry; so much of the linen consisted of Grace’s bedding, stained with her illness. Gus was standing by the river, watching the children attempting to coax their dog to fetch a stick in the quiet flow. He looked at her and raised his eyebrows in question.
    â€œIt doesn’t look good. Mary says she can’t eat or drink anything and the doctor has given them no hope. I feel so helpless, as though there’s something I ought to be doing. But they are so stoic and it is clear that they will cope with it as best they are able to. Agrippa went for the priest and now he’s back.” Flora reached up her sleeve for her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
    Gus said gently, “Ah, that’s it then. The priest means it’s very serious.”
    â€œMight it mean that they are trying everything? I hate to think of a child dying. Oh, anyone dying of course, but a child . . .”
    â€œLots of children die on the reserves, Miss Oakden. Well, not just on the reserves but perhaps more of them than white children. Agrippa and Mary lost one only a year ago. We have brought so many diseases to them, smallpox being the worst, I guess, but even measles or influenza will sweep through these villages, killing far too many people. My father . . .” and then he stopped, looking surprised that he had gone this far, and to a complete stranger.
    â€œYour father . . .” Flora prompted, curious. One did not think of the men who ploughed and fixed fence posts as boys with fathers, young pups trailing the wake of an older man with a pipe, a shooting stick, the only kind of father Flora knew; they seemed to have sprung from the landscape fully formed, ready to work in their dungarees and worn shirts. “What about him?”