child was going to be a boy. Ma Hawks and the wise
married women of the troupe knew the signs. She felt
thus-and-so. She had such-and-such sensations. She
was carrying the child high. Boys always were slower
in being born than girls. Besides, this was a first child,
and the first child always 1s late. They got together,
in mysterious female conclave, and counted on the fingers of their two hands—August, September, October, November, December—why, the end of April, the soonest. They’d be safe in New Orleans by then, with the best of doctors for Magnolia, and she on land
while one of the other women in the company played her parts until she was strong again—a matter of two or three weeks at most.
No sooner had they started than the rains began. No early April showers, these, but torrents that blotted out the river banks on either side and sent the clay tumbling 1n great cave-ins, down to the water, jaundicing it afresh where already it seethed an ochreous mass. Day after day, night after night, the rains came down, melting the Northern ice and snow, filtering through the land of the Mississippi basin and finding its way, whether trickle, rivulet, creek, stream, or river, to the great hungry mother, Mississippi. And she grew swollen, and tossed and flung her huge limbs about and shrieked in labour even as Magnolia Ravenal was so soon to do.
Eager for entertainment as the dwellers were along the little Illinois and Missouri towns, after a long winter of dull routine on farm and in store and schoolhouse, they came sparsely to the show boat. Posters had told them of her coming, and the news filtered to the back-
