"She is very easily managed, now," answered Mrs. Gray. "She obeys my slightest look."
"We've a little mite of a fellow in there," said the good nurse; "he only weighed three pounds and a quarter with his clothes on. I never thought he would live till this time."
"Is he quiet?" asked the aunt.
"He has turns of screaming dreadfully," answered the nurse. "That is what has kept his mother so ill."
At this moment they heard Mr. Gray and Mr. Nelson coming up the stairs, and the nurse opened the door and beckoned them into the nursery, as the sick lady was trying to get some sleep while the baby was quiet.
Maria had been sitting in the room with her work; but now she arose and said, "Baby will be likely to sleep a spell now, and I'll go down to the kitchen and do my ironing."
"I will take care of him till you return," said Mrs. Gray.
Her husband and Willie were to ride home in the afternoon, and so her brother had invited them up to see his little son. He seemed very anxious about the baby, and asked his sister whether she thought it would live.
Before she answered, the lady bent gently over the cradle, and put her ear down to its chest. It was in such a deep sleep that it almost seemed as if it were already dead. "I cannot tell," she said, seriously, "until I have seen it when awake."
After dinner, before her husband returned home, she called him into the parlor, and told him she was afraid Maria gave the baby something to make it sleep so heavily, and she was determined to stay and watch her, and try to save the dear child.