'Who, my dear?' asked Mrs. Silver, holding up a warning finger to Mr. Merrywhistle, so that he should not speak.
Rachel heard his light breathing.
'Mr. Merrywhistle,' she said, and went near to him. He kissed her, and she went back to her station by the side of Ruth.
They were a pleasant bunch of human flowers to gaze at, and so Mr. and Mrs. Silver and Mr. Merrywhistle thought, for their eyes glistened at the healthful sight. Ruth and Rachel stood hand in hand, and it was easily to be seen that they were necessary to each other. But pleasant as the children were to the sight, a stranger would have been struck with amazement at their unlikeness to one another. Brothers and sisters they surely could not be, although their presence there and their bearing to each other betokened no less close a relationship. They were not indeed related by blood, neither to one another, nor to Mr. and Mrs. Silver. They were Mrs. Silver's foundlings--children of her love, whom she had taken, one by one, to rear as her own, whom she had snatched from the lap of Destitution.
Her marriage was one of purest affection, but she was barren; and after a time, no children coming, she felt a want in her home. Her husband was secretary in a sound assurance office, and they possessed means to rear a family. Before their marriage, they had both dwelt in thought upon the delight and pure pleasure in store for them, and after their marriage she saw baby-faces in her dreams. She mused: 'My husband's son will be a good man, like his father, and we shall train him well, and he will be a pride to us.' And he: 'In my baby daughter I shall see my wife from her infancy, and I shall watch her grow to girlhood, to pure womanhood, and shall take delight in her, for that she is ours, the offspring of our love.' But these were dreams. No children came; and his wife still dreamt of her shadow-baby, and yearned to clasp it to her bosom. Years went on--they had married when they were young--and her yearning was unsatisfied. Pain entered into her life; a dull envy tormented her, when she thought of homes made happy by children's prattle, and her tears flowed easily at the sight of children. Her husband, engrossed all the day in the duties and anxieties of his business, had less time to brood over the deprivation, although he mourned it in his leisure hours; but she, being always at home, and having no stern labour to divert her thoughts from the sad channel in which they seemed quite naturally to run, mourned with so intense a grief, that it took possession of her soul and threatened to make her life utterly unhappy. One day he awoke to this, and quietly watched her; saw the wistful looks she cast about her, unaware that she was being observed; felt tears flowing from her eyes at night. He questioned her, and learnt that her grief and disappointment were eating into her heart; that, strive as she would, her life was unhappy in its loneliness while he was away, and that the sweetest light of home was wanting.
'I see baby-faces in my dreams,' she said to him one night, 'and hear baby-voices--so sweet, O, so sweet!' She pressed him in her arms, and laid his head upon her breast. 'And when I wake, I grieve.'
'Dear love,' he said, all the tenderness of his nature going out in his words, 'God wills it so.'
'I know, I know, my love,' she answered, her tears still flowing.
'How can I fill up the void in her life?' he thought, and gave expression to his thought.
Then she reproached herself, and asked his forgiveness, and cried, in remorse, 'How could she, how could she grieve him with her sorrow?'