My husband immediately answered in the affirmative, and the child arrived a week after. He was a fine, intelligent, gentlemanly boy of eight years, with large hazel eyes, and transparently beautiful temples: disinclined to the usual sports of childhood, sensitive, shy, and thoughtful beyond his years--a human dew-drop, which we look to see exhale. He brought with him a letter from his mother, which powerfully affected my husband. During its perusal he drew his hand repeatedly across his eyes, and sat a long while after he had finished reading it, with his eyes closed, in a deep reverie. By-and-by he said, handing me the letter, “there is genius there, Hetty. I never read anything so touchingly beautiful. Mrs. West must be a very talented and superior woman.” I glanced over the letter. It fully justified my husband’s encomiums. It was a most touching appeal to him to watch with paternal care over her only child; but while she spoke with a mother’s tenderness of his endearing qualities, she wished him taught implicitly, that first of all duties for the young, _obedience_. Then followed allusions to dark days of sorrow, during which the love of that cherished child, was the only star in her sky. I folded the letter and sat very still, after my husband left, in my little rocking-chair, thinking. Such a gifted woman as that my husband should have married. One who could have sympathised with him and shared his intellectual pursuits; who would have been something besides a toy to amuse an idle hour, or to minister to his physical necessities. Perhaps it was of this that my husband was thinking, as he sat there with his eyes closed over the open letter. Perhaps he had wed me only from a generous impulse of pity, and that letter had suddenly revealed to him the happiness of which he was capable with a kindred spirit. I was very miserable. I wished the letter had never reached us, or that I had declined the care of the child. Other letters, of course, would come, and the boy would keep alive the interest in the intervals. I wept long and bitterly. At length I was aroused by the entrance of little Charley. A bright flush mounted to his forehead, when he saw my swollen eyes. He hesitated a moment, then gliding up to my side he said, sweetly, “Are you sick? Shall I bathe your head? I used to bathe mamma’s head when it pained her.”