She beamed gratefully, but did not tell him that, after the long, secret conference between her brother and the rector, Leonard had come to her and wept for Arthur the only tears he had ever shed in her presence. Now Leonard had found occasion to go West for a time, though he still held his office; and Arthur was filling the rectorate almost in the old first way. On some small parish matter the rustic vestryman with the spectacled daughter came to Arthur's library in better spirits than he had shown for months, and by and by asked conjecturally, "I—eh—guess you don't keep any babies here you're ashamed to show, do ye?" and held his mouth very wide open.
The infinitesimal was brought.
"Well, I vum! Why, Miz. Winslow, I don't believe th' ever was a pretty baby so puny, nor a puny baby so pretty! Now, if it's a fair question, I hope y' ain't tryin' to push in between this baby and the keaow, be ye?"
"No," laughed Isabel. "I'm not that conceited. I should only be in the way."
"Well," he said as they parted, shaking Arthur's hand to the end of his speech, "I like to see a baby resemble its father, and that's what this 'n 's a-tryin' to do, jest 's hard 's she can."
So went matters for a time, and then, while the babe began to fill out and lengthen out, Isabel showed herself daily more and more overspent. The physician reappeared, and spoke plainly:—
"And if your cousin down South is so determined to have you at her wedding, why, go! Leave your baby with your mother; she's older in the business than you are."
But the cousin's wedding was weeks away yet, and Isabel clung to her wee treasure, and temporized with the aunts and cousins in the South and with her mother and Ruth at home, until the doctor spoke again.
"Let's see," he said to Arthur. "This is November, baby's five months old. Send your wife away. Put her out! Something's killing her by inches, and I believe it's just care o' the nest. We must drive her off it, as I drove Leonard Byington off,—which, you remember, you, quietly, were the first to suggest to me to do.... Coming back, you say,—Byington? Yes, but only for a day or two,—election time."
It did not occur to the doctor that Arthur was secretly keeping his wife from going anywhere.