“I don’t know yet. It will depend on how I get on with these; but at least three. This is little Samuel, named for father. The next one will be a girl, named Mary Elizabeth, for mother. I had to call the first one Helen. And I am afraid I shall always love her best. She was my first happiness, you see, after—after,” she repeated, “unhappiness. I doubt if the others will mean so much to me. Do they?” she asked anxiously. “I mean do mothers grow to love all their children alike?”
“I don’t know, my dear; but you will,” Mrs. Arnold answered, her eyes filling with tears.
“They are treasures I am laying up for my old age. They will be my life and joy and hope, when I shall have grown too old to achieve these things. Their laughter will lift me. Their love will be my perpetual spring. And we shall have weddings in this house,” she concluded.
“You believe in marriage?” the other could not refrain from asking.
“Oh, yes. Even in my own.”
“You would go back to your husband?”
“Never.”
There was a silence.
“But if he comes back to you?”
“He will not come,” she returned.