“Oh! Don’t weep so, darling. I will soon be well, and Oh! my husband we have a precious baby boy.” Then she said, as if in the joy of knowing that her baby was a boy, she had forgotten all else,
“Tell grandfather to come here. Tell him the boy shall bear his name.”
The Doctor went himself to bring her grandfather to her. She never noticed that strange fact.
James Dunlap, never had you in your seventy-three years of life more need of strength of mind than now!
Her grandfather came to her leaning heavily upon the Doctor’s arm. He bent and kissed her brow, and in so doing dropped a tear upon her cheek. Quickly she looked up and seeing pain and grief in the white face above her, she started and in the alarmed voice of a little child, she cried,
“Am I going to die? Are you all so pale and weep because I am dying? Tell me Doctor! Why Mamma Church is crying too.”
She so had called Mrs. Church when a wee maid and sometimes did so still.
The Doctor seeing that she was flushed and greatly excited hastened to the bedside and said calmly but most earnestly,
“No, my dear. You will not die, they are not weeping for that reason, but you have been very ill and we all love you so much that we weep from sympathy for you, my dear. Now please lie down. You must my child, and all must leave the room but nurse and me,” and speaking thus, he gently pressed the gold-brown head back on the pillows and urged all to leave the room immediately.