Moving noiselessly, she set the broth on a low table by the doctor's side, covered him carefully with her own heavy cloak, and left the room. On the threshold, she turned back and looked again at his face. Her conscious thoughts were more than she could bear. In sudden impatience with herself, she exclaimed, "Pshaw! how silly I am!" and hastened upstairs, more like the old original Hetty than she had been for many days. Love could not enthrone himself easily in Hetty's nature: it was a rebellious kingdom. "Thirty-seven years old! Hetty Gunn, you 're a goose," were Hetty's last thoughts as she fell asleep that night. But when she awoke the next morning, the same refrain, "Why not, why not?" filled her thoughts; and, when she bade Dr. Eben good-morning, the rosy color that mounted to her very temples gave him a new happiness. Why prolong the story of the next few days? They were just such days as every man and every woman who has loved has lived through, and knows far better than can be said or sung. Love's beginnings are varied, and his final crises of avowal take individual shape in each individual instance: but his processes and symptoms of growth are alike in all cases; the indefinable delight,--the dreamy wondering joy,--the half avoidance which really means seeking,--the seeking which shelters itself under endless pleas,--the ceaseless questioning of faces,--the mute caresses of looks, and the eloquent caresses of tones,--are they not written in the books of the chronicles of all lovers? What matter how or when the crowning moment of full surrender comes? It came to Eben and Hetty, however, more suddenly at last than it often comes; came in a way so characteristic of them both, that perhaps to tell it may not be a sin, since we aim at a complete setting forth of their characters. VIII. For three days little Raby had been so ill that the doctor had not left the house day nor night, except for imperative calls from other patients. Each night the paroxysms of croup returned with great severity, and the little fellow's strength seemed fast giving way under them. Sally and Hetty, his two mothers, were very differently affected by the grief they bore in common. Sally was speechless, calm, almost dogged in her silence. When Dr. Eben trying to comfort her, said: "Don't feel so, Mrs. Little: I think we shall pull the boy through all right." She looked up in his face, and shook her head, speaking no word. "I am not saying it merely to comfort you; indeed, I am not, Mrs. Little," said the doctor. "I really believe he will get well. These attacks of croup seem much worse than they really are." "I don't know that it comforts me," replied Sally, speaking very slowly. "I don't know that I want him to live; but I think perhaps he might be allowed to die easier, if I didn't need so much punishing. It is worse than death to see him suffer so."