Free The Family Greene by Ann Rinaldi

circles under her eyes, reached out her arms to Pa. "Oh, Nathanael, I'm sorry," she said.
    Pa knelt next to her. "The doctor is on his way," he told her.
    But it was what Martha said that affected us most.
    "It's Cornelia's fault," she told him. "She was running away from Mama and she wouldn't stop when Mama said to stop. She made Mama run after her."
    Pa went right on talking to Mama, and for a moment I didn't think he paid mind to Martha at all. I thought he scarce heard her.
    But, as it turned out, he did. Pa's experience as a general had taught him to take account of everything at once, to listen to what six people were saying at the same time while the guns were booming. And there weren't any guns booming at the time in our kitchen.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    P A PICKED Mama up, wrapping her in blankets that Alice had fetched, and brought her upstairs to their room.
    "Go to your rooms and stay there," he ordered me and Martha.
    Martha did but I didn't. I set to helping Alice and Polly and Janice clean up. Because it was my fault what had happened. When they wiped the blood up from the floor, I made some tea for Mama, and when the front door knocker sounded, I took off my apron and answered it and walked Dr. Kinney upstairs.
    That good man stared at me. I must have been God's own mess. "Are you hurt, Cornelia?" he asked.
    "No, sir, my mama is. I was just making her some tea."
    He nodded and went into Mama and Pa's bedroom. "You're a good girl," he mumbled. It comforted me, his saying that. If only Pa would think so.
    As I went back down the stairs, the others were coming up.
    George, who was the oldest at almost eleven, born during a heavy bombardment at Cambridge at the beginning of the war and named after George Washington himself.
    And Martha, who had come out of her room where Pa had sent her.
    Nat came with them. He was near seven, born after me.
    Louisa, the baby, toddled last. She was two.
    I had the singular honor of being conceived at Valley Forge. "That camp on the west bank of the Schuylkill," Pa called it, "that had no valley and no forge. Your mother was happy there."
    "Of course she was happy," Martha once told me. "Surrounded by all those army officers who danced and flirted with her."
    Martha seemed to know a lot about it. Oh, there was no mystery as to the reason she knew a lot about it.
    Eulinda told her things. In all honesty, Eulinda told us all a lot of things about the war, about the interesting stories in Mama and Pa's past, for as far back as she knew, anyway. How else would we know about "the dark huts and leaky roofs" the men lived in at Valley Forge? About how the men lived mostly on "fire cakes," a paste of flour and water cooked on hot rocks over an open fire.
    How else would I know that when I was born, in our Coventry, Rhode Island, home, Mama was in travail for two days. And that at the time, Pa had wanted another boy but he didn't get one until Nat came along. And that somewhere in between, Mama lost another baby to whooping cough.
    But always, always, Martha knew more. Because Martha badgered Eulinda to tell more.
    Up ahead in the hall, Pa came out of Mama's room. My brothers and sisters were all chattering on the steps below me.
    "Downstairs, all of you," Pa ordered. "The doctor is seeing to your mother. I want no noise. Where is your tutor? Where is Mr. Miller?"
    "He's in the kitchen, seeing to some food for us," George said. "He wants to take us on a ride this afternoon. Can we go, Pa?"
    "No. I'll speak with him. I want you all here, in case I need you. Now go downstairs." He shooed them and they went.
    What did he mean, "in case I need you"? Was Mama failing? Dying? A shock of fear went through me. I cast Pa a look of appeal before I turned to go downstairs, too.
    He put a restraining hand on my shoulder, then said, "Go in and see your mother."
    Eulinda was in there. She glared at me as I entered. "Bad girl," she snarled, "to bring your mama to such a state."
    Mama lay, eyes closed, pale and