Concerning Arthur himself, the matter was simple enough now. All his fractiousness, restlessness, and innumerable wants were easy to put up with; she loved the child. And he, who (except from his father) had never known any love before, took it with a wondering complacency, half funny, half pathetic. Sometimes he would say, looking at her wistfully, "Oh, it's so nice to be ill!" And once, the first time she untied his right arm, and allowed it to move freely, he slipped it around her neck, whispering, "You are very good to me, mother." Christian crept away. She dared not clasp him or cry over him, he was so weak still; but she stole aside into the oriel window, her heart full almost to bursting. After that he always called her "mother." The other two children she scarcely ever saw. The need for keeping Arthur quiet was so vital, that of course they were not admitted to his room, and she herself rarely left it. Dim and far away seemed all the world, and especially her own poor life, whether happy or miserable, compared with that frail existence, which hung almost upon a thread. At last the medical opinion was given that little Arthur might, with great care and incessant watching ("which it is plain he will have, Mrs. Grey," added the old doctor, bowing and smiling), grow up to be a man yet. When Dr. Anstruther said this, Christian felt as if the whole world had brightened. She had no one to tell her joy to, for Dr. Grey was out, but she stood in her familiar retreat at the window--oh, what that window could have revealed of the last few weeks!--and her tears, long dried up, poured down like summer rain. And then Dr. Grey came in, very much agitated; he had met the doctor in the street and been told glad tidings. She had to compel herself into sudden quietness, for her husband's sake, which, indeed, was a lesson now daily being learned, and growing every day sweeter in the learning. "Christian," he said, when they had talked it all over, and settled when and where Arthur was first to go out of doors, with various other matter of fact things which she thought would soonest calm the father's emotion--"Christian, Dr. Anstruther tells me my boy could not have lived but for you and your care. I shall ever remember this--ever feel grateful." A pang, the full meaning of which she then did not in the least understand, shot through Christian's heart. "You should not feel grateful to his _mother._" "Do you mean, really, that you love him like--like a mother?" "Of course I do." Dr. Grey said nothing more, but his wife felt him put his arm round her. She leaned her head against him and, though she still wept--for the tears, once unsealed, seemed painfully quick to rise--still she was contented and at rest. Worn and weary a little, now the suspense was over the reaction came, but very peaceful. Unconsciously there ran through her mind one of the foolish bits of poetry she had been fond of when a girl: