"If he doesn't get worse, we'll pull through," said the doctor, turning from his examination of Harry to lay his hand, which felt as heavy as lead, on her shoulder. "We've an even chance--if his heart doesn't go back on us." And he added, "Most mothers are good nurses, Jinny, but I never saw a better one than you are--unless it was your own mother. You get it from her, I reckon. I remember when you went through diphtheria how she sent your father to stay with one of the neighbours, and shut herself up with old Ailsey to nurse you. I don't believe she undressed or closed her eyes for a week." Her own mother! So she was not the only one who had suffered this anguish--other women, many women, had been through it before she was born. It was a part of that immemorial pang of motherhood of which the old doctor had spoken. "But, was I ever in danger? Was I as ill as Harry?" she asked. "For twenty-four hours we thought you'd slip through our fingers every minute. 'Twas only your mother's nursing that kept you alive--I've told her that twenty times. She never spared herself an instant, and, it may have been my imagination, but she never seemed to me to be the same woman afterwards. Something had gone out of her." Now she understood, now she knew, something had gone out of her, also, and this something was youth. No woman who had fought with death for a child could ever be the same afterwards--could ever value again the small personal joys, when she carried the memory of supreme joy or supreme anguish buried within her heart. She remembered that her mother had never seemed young to her, not even in her earliest childhood; and she understood now why this had been so, why the deeper experiences of life rob the smaller ones of all vividness, of all poignancy. It had been so easy for her mother to give up little things, to deny herself, to do without, to make no further demands on life after the great demands had been granted her. How often had she said unthinkingly in her girlhood, "Mother, you never want anything for yourself." Ah, she knew now what it meant, and with the knowledge a longing seized her to throw herself into her mother's arms, to sob out her understanding and her sympathy, to let her feel before it was too late that she comprehended every step of the way, every throb of the agony! "I'd spend the night with you, Jinny, if I didn't have to be with Milly Carrington, who has two children down with it," said the doctor; "but if there's any change, get Marthy to come for me. If not, I'll be sure to look in again before daybreak."