That night the nurse and Doctor heard the patient often murmur both while awake and while she slept,
“My baby, my baby, it’s a boy, my baby.”
For two or three days after this night Lucy was quite ill again. Her mind seemed wandering all along the path of her former life, but always the all over-shadowing subject in all the wanderings of her thoughts was, “My baby,” “My baby.” Sometimes she called for Jack saying, “Come Jack, and see my baby,” and then for her uncle, laughing in her sleep and saying “See, Uncle John, I’ve brought into the world a boy, my baby.”
When the fever again abated and once more she became conscious her first words were “My baby, bring it now.”
For several days the mental resources of the nurse, Doctor and Mrs. Church were taxed to their utmost in finding excuses for the absence of the baby. He was not well. He was asleep, she was not well enough and many other things they told her as reasons for not bringing her baby to her.
But, Oh! the piteous pleading in her voice and eyes, as with quivering lips and fluttering hands extended toward them she would beg,
“Please bring my baby to me. Every mother wishes to see her baby, to press it to her breast, to feel its breath upon her cheek, to hold it to her heart; Oh! Please bring my darling to me.”
Poor Mrs. Church, no martyr ever suffered more than did that tender-hearted woman, who loved Lucy with a mother’s heart.
The Doctor, when he had reassured and quieted, for a little while, his patient, would leave the room and standing in the hall would wring his hands and groan, as if in mortal agony.
One night when Lucy seemed more restful than usual, and was slumbering, worn out by emotion and watching, the Doctor, lying on a couch in the hall, fell fast asleep. The nurse, seeing all about her resting, her charge peacefully and regularly, first became drowsy, nodded and then slept.