"Jack!" her voice echoed softly through the silence.
The golden head turned, the veriest ghost of a smile came to the pinched face, and the thin little hands stretched themselves aimlessly into space with a sudden plaintive cry which sent a lump to Philip's throat.
"Lor!" protested the nurse full of pride; "didn't he say it beautiful clear that time? Mother? Yes, it is mother, my pretty; and you knows her voice, don't you, dearie? just as well as any on us."
Belle sate down on the cot, gathering the child in her arms, and the yellow curls nestled down contentedly on her shoulder. A mite of a boy with great wide blue eyes fixed on the only face he ever recognises. "Do you think him grown at all?" she asked; then seeing Philip's look bent over the child and kissed the blue veins on the large forehead. There was a passion of protection in her kisses. "If he were the only one, Phil, I should break my heart about it; but there are so many,--and,--and it is so causeless." Her eyes seemed to pass beyond the child and she went on more cheerfully, "Then he is such a contented little fellow when he is with me,--aren't you, Jack?"
Again came the ghost of a smile, and the same plaintive cry. Philip walked to the window and looked out on the roses. It was a very slight thing, that cry, to have come between a man and a woman,--if it had come between them. He turned to look at Belle instinctively, and found her looking at him. No! nothing had come between them. Before the insoluble problem of what Belle held in her arms love seemed to him forever divorced from marriage. The veriest pariah, born of God knows what, or of whom, the outcome of the basest passion, might enter the world fair and strong and capable, while their child, if they married, bringing each to each a pure devotion, might be as these children here.
He crossed the room again and sate down on the bed beside her. "How many have you in the hospital now?" he asked in a low voice, for Jack, contented and comfortable, was evidently falling asleep.
"Fifty; but Dr. Simmonds says he could fill a hundred beds to-morrow. It is the best place, he declares, of its kind."
"Would you undertake so much?"
She shook her head. "I never know,--no one knows from day to day. They are all so frail. Freddy, for instance, was no worse yesterday, and to-day! There are plenty to fill my place here when,--when the time comes."
"It may never come. Besides," he added, "I may be incurable myself ere long. Don't you remember promising me the gatekeeper's place if ever I was pensioned off minus a leg or an arm?"