There's going to be an addition to the family. Mom and Dad have had what is sometimes called an accident, an accident of the night. Whatever the proximate cause, number nine is on the way!
With fairly young children always in the house Mom hasn't taken a job in town; she hasn't worked away from home since she was single, and it probably doesn't appeal to her. Now, as it turns out, she can be productive without leaving the house.
Everyone is quite excited when the baby is finally due. All the others were delivered at home with the help of a midwife; this will be the first one to be born in a hospital. And this will also be the first natural Canadian in the family! The doctor is concerned about Mom's age, but she is not worried at all, and Dad seems quite happy about it.
When Mom goes to the hospital Jack is in charge of things at home. Neddie and Addie don't seem to have a problem with that, although they're both older than he is. They're used to Jack taking the lead. And Dad's mind is elsewhere, somewhere between the farm and the hospital.
It's a boy! Healthy and lively, and Mom is just fine. They call him Fred. Now there are nine children. A football team? A nice pattern; two girls, a boy, two girls, a boy, two girls, and now, a boy. Three groups of three. Three trinities.
When Mom comes home, she finds she has too much milk. She asks Jack if he wants to help her with that, but he blushes, and says no, I don't think so. And he goes off into the bush. Doesn't she understand the difference? Or did he misunderstand her? He tries to put this out of his mind, but it does not go away. It comes up in his dreams. Everything comes up in his dreams.
Jack has the ability with language that seems to come with the experience of learning several new ones. He has become keenly aware of language and how it works. And all his reading has an effect here too. So he seldom has any problem with grammar, or with spelling.
Perhaps from reading so much, perhaps because he seems more than most people visually oriented, he notices that when he attends to a word, whether speaking or just thinking about it, he sees it in his mind, spelled out in large clear letters, the sort you first see in the lower grades, when words are taught for the first time. So to see how to spell a word, he only has to look at it in his head. The people he checks with don't seem to have this facility.
