Although these things weren’t talked about openly but in whispers among the women, it had been clear for sometime now that Rebekah was in the family way, or as good Queen Victoria would herself put it a hundred years later, “all knocked up”.  Mary and Elsie were quick to take on the most strenuous tasks in the home and as the big day approached, their talk was often of old mother Haynes, the only midwife in town. Nearing sixty and in failing health, she was anxious to train some younger women in the profession that she was now finding more and more demanding. I was looking forward to being a grandfather, if only a ghostly one, and  since it didn’t seem to matter anyway, decided to eaves-drop on the conversation during Mrs Haynes’s first visit. The gaunt haggard looking woman that arrived by horse and cart, was I felt, certainly, more frightening than I could ever be, but as I was to soon learn had the sweetest voice and kindest heart imaginable.  She was pleased to see Rebekah so healthy and felt that the baby should arrive in about two weeks. Just twelve days later Patrick John Riley made his debut, the first member of the family to be born in the new world. I was as proud as any ghost could be.