He was bigger than she, but the muscles of the little maiden were as springs of steel, informed with the tenderest, strongest heart in all the county, and presently he would find himself lifted to her lap, his head on her shoulder, the sweetest voice in all the world whispering loveliest secrets in his willing ear, and her face bent over him with the stoop of heaven over the patient, weary earth. In her arms his poor wasting body forgot its restlessness; the fever that irritated every nerve, burning away the dust of the world, seemed to pause and let him grow a little cool; and the sleep that sometimes came to him there was sweet as death. The face that had so long looked peevish, wore now a waiting look: in heaven, every one sheltered the other, and the arms of God were round them all! One day the mother peeped in, and saw them seated thus. Motherhood, strong in her, though hitherto, as regarded the boy, poisoned by her strife with her husband, moved and woke at the sight of her natural place occupied by her daughter. “Let me take him, poor fellow!” she said. Delighted that her mother should do something for him, Barbara rose with him in her arms. The mother sat down, and Barbara laid him in her lap. But the mother felt him lie listless and dead; no arm came creeping feebly up to encircle her neck. One of her babies died unborn, and she knew the moment the strange sad feeling of the time came back to her now; she felt through all her sensitive maternal body that her child did not care for her. Grown, through her late illness, at once weaker and tenderer, she burst into silent weeping. He looked up; the convulsion of her pain had roused him from a half-sleep. A tear dropped on his face. “Don't rain, mamma! I will be good!” he said, and held his mouth to be kissed. He was much too old for such baby-speech, but as he grew weaker, he had grown younger; and it seemed now as if, in his utter helplessness, he would go back to the bosom of his mother. She clasped him to her, and from that moment she and Barbara shared him between them. So for a while, Barbara had not the same room to think about Richard; but when she did think of him, it was always in the some loving, trusting, hoping way.