"Very quiet. Too quiet, your mother says."
"Mamma says all sorts of things when she is in a temper, as you have learnt by this time, and she is in one this morning," was Adela's light, and not over-dutiful remark. Not but that it was true.
Mr. Grubb had taken the child in his arms, and stood looking down upon it. Save that its eyes were open and that it breathed, it seemed still enough for death. He did not understand babies, but he did think this one was unnaturally quiet.
"Why are you looking at him so attentively?" asked Adela, by-and-by.
"I don't think he can be well."
"But—you don't think he is ill, do you?" returned she after a pause, and speaking quickly.
"Adela, I do not know. He seems to me to have changed a little in the last half-hour, since I first came in. Of course I may be mistaken."
"Suppose you send for Dr. Dove?"
"I can send if you like: he has only just gone, you know. The nurse does not seem to be"—alarmed, he was about to say, but changed the word—"anxious; so all may be well."
He put the baby in its place, and Lady Adela raised her head to look at it. "He gets paler, I think," she observed; "and, as you say, he is very, very quiet. Poor little thing! he has no strength yet."