And there’s nothing more to add to this digression. Except that Kettie died.
The tidings did not appear to affect Hyde Stockhausen. All his thoughts were given to his wife and child. Old Abel had never reproached him by as much as a word: if by chance they met, Abel avoided looking at him, or turned off another way.
When the baby was six months old and began to cut his teeth, he did not appear inclined to do it kindly. He grew thin and cross; and the parents, who seemed to think no baby ever born could come up to this one, began to be anxious. Hyde worshipped the child ridiculously.
“The boy will do well enough if he does not get convulsions,” Duffham said in semi-confidence to some people over his surgery counter. “If they come on—why, I can’t answer for what the result might be. Fat? Yes, he is a great deal too fat: they feed him up so.”
The surgeon was sitting by his parlour-fire one snowy evening shortly after this, when Stockhausen burst upon him in a fine state of agitation; arms working, breath gone. The baby was in a fit.
“Come, come; don’t you give way,” cried the doctor, believing Hyde was going into a fit on his own account. “We’ll see.”
Out of one convulsion into another went the child that night: but in a few days it was better; thought to be getting well. Mr. and Mrs. Stockhausen in consequence felt themselves in the seventh heaven.
“The danger is quite past,” observed Hyde, walking down the snowy path with Duffham, one morning when the doctor had been paying a visit; and Hyde rubbed his hands in gleeful relief, for he had been like a crazed lunatic while the child lay ill. “Duffham, if that child had died, I think I should have died.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Duffham. “You are made of tougher stuff.”