"Leave me here with my child," she whispered. "No," he replied, curtly. "You must breathe the fresh air. We do not want another patient, and your pulse is much agitated. When we have dined, we will relieve the nurse."
He walked on without another word, and she dared not oppose him. In the shade before the house, close to the window of the sick-room, the cover had been laid for two. Just as they came out, the landlady brought a dish of fish, and placed them on the table, these were followed by a roasted fowl. During the repast they hardly spoke a word to each other. Both were lost in thought. Now and then, he would persuade her, not only to take a few mouthfuls on her plate, but to eat them. "I shall be offended," he said, gaily, "if you eat nothing. We doctors enjoy the reputation of being great gourmands. I hope I have not disgraced my profession in this instance?"
"Pardon me, if I cannot yet bear the brightness around me," she said. "My heart has been too deeply troubled. I have passed through such heavy storms, that the ground still trembles beneath me. To-morrow I will behave better." Then they both relapsed into silence, and gazed at the lake, over which the mid-day heat was brooding. A cricket chirped in the quiet little garden; and within the landlord snored on his bench by the stove. From the shed by the lake, the gurgle of the waves against the softly rocking boats was heard, and from the sick-room the nurse humming a nursery rhyme, the same with which years ago she had lulled the child in her cradle to sleep.
The quiet day was followed by a restless night. The fever increased in violence; the child moaned continually, and could hardly be kept in her bed. At midnight she grew calmer.
The doctor hardly stirred from the house; only in the evening, he refreshed himself with a cigar out of doors. Then he took a turn round the house, and every time he passed the window of the sick-room, stopped for a moment, and spoke a few words of encouragement to the mother who would not quit the bed-side. In the night, while watching with her--the nurse had been sent to bed--he suddenly said: "How much your child resembles you. Just now, in this dim light, when you stooped over her and the little girl looked up to you with that peculiarly spiritual and precocious expression which illness gives, I could almost have fancied that you were sisters. Ten years hence, she will be your very image." "Perhaps you are right," answered the young mother, "but the resemblance is only outward: all her mental qualities she inherits from her father. I often wonder at so great a likeness in such a young child, and that too a girl. Her truthfulness her self-denial, her courage often make me feel as if my lost husband had been given back to me in this child."
"You are mentioning qualities, which during our short acquaintance, I have remarked that you possess in a high degree."
She shook her head, "If I seem courageous, it is only owing to my natural cowardice. When you first saw me I was quite broken-hearted with misery, and anxiety, but I dared not give vent to my feelings, for I knew that I should break down utterly at the sound of my own voice. My husband could look the most fearful events calmly in the face; and so it is with the child. He could make any sacrifice without thinking of himself."
"And you; I should think, you did not spare yourself in the first days of this trial."
"A mother's heart feels no sacrifice," she answered, "but before my child was born I often had to strive with myself, and force myself to do what was distasteful to me for the sake of others. It is not so with the child, though youth generally is, and well may be, the season for egotism. I could tell you a hundred traits of her excellent disposition. I have often felt anxious about her, for so precocious a tenderness of feeling is said to be the presage of a short life. Who can tell whether it may not be realized."