All this, being town's talk, Christian already knew; more she had never inquired, not even when she was engaged to him. Nor did Dr. Grey volunteer any information. The strongest and most soothing part of his influence over her was his exceeding silence. He had never troubled her with any great demonstrations, nor frightened her with questionings. From the time of their engagement he had seemed to take every thing for granted, and to treat her tenderly, almost reverently, without fuss or parade, yet with the consideration due from a man to his future wife; so much so that she had hardly missed, what, indeed, in her simplicity she hardly expected, the attention usually paid to an affianced bride from the relatives of her intended. Dr. Grey had only two, his own sister and his late wife's. These ladies, Miss Gascoigne and Miss Grey, had neither called upon nor taken the least notice of Miss Oakley. But Miss Oakley--if she thought about the matter at all--ascribed it to a fact well recognized in Avonsbridge, as in most University towns, that one might as soon expect the skies to fall as for a college lady to cross, save for purely business purposes, the threshold of a High Street tradesman. The same cause, she concluded, made them absent from her wedding; and when Dr. Grey had said simply, "I shall desire my sisters to send the children," Christian had inquired no farther. Only for a second, hanging on the brink of this first meeting with the children--her husband's children, hers that were to be--did her heart fail her, and then she came forward to meet the little group. Letitia and Arthur were thin, prim-looking, rather plain children; but Oliver was the very picture of a father's darling, a boy that any childless man would bitterly covet, any childless woman crave and yearn for, with a longing that women alone can understand; a child who, beautiful as most childhood is, had a beauty you rarely see--bright, frank, merry, bold; half a Bacchus and half a Cupid, he was a perfect image of the Golden Age. Though three years old, he was evidently still "the baby," and rode on his father's shoulder with a glorious tyranny charming to behold. "Who's that?" said he, pointing his fat fingers and shaking his curls that undulated like billows of gold. "Papa, who's that?" Hardly could there have been put by anyone a more difficult question. Dr. Grey did not answer, but avoided it, taking the whole three to Christian's side, and bidding them, in a rather nervous voice, to "kiss this lady." But that ceremony the two elder obstinately declined. "I am a big boy, and I don't like to be kissed," said Arthur. "Nurse told us, since we had no mamma of our own, we were not to kiss any body but our aunts," added Letitia. Dr. Grey looked terribly annoyed, but Christian said calmly, "Very well, then shake hands only. We shall be better friends by-and-by."