“His name?” queried the woman.
“He has no name!” Mrs. Dinneford stamped her foot in angry impatience.
The woman stooped down, and taking up the basket, tucked the covering that had been laid over the baby close about its head, so that no one could see what she carried, and went off without uttering another word.
It was some moments before either Mrs. Dinneford or the nurse spoke. Mrs. Bray was first to break silence.
“All this means a great deal more than you have counted on,” she said, in a voice that betrayed some little feeling. “To throw a tender baby out like that is a hard thing. I am afraid—”
“There, there! no more of that,” returned Mrs. Dinneford, impatiently. “It's ugly work, I own, but it had to be done—like cutting off a diseased limb. He will die, of course, and the sooner it is over, the better for him and every one else.”
“He will have a hard struggle for life, poor little thing!” said the nurse. “I would rather see him dead.”
Mrs. Dinneford, now that this wicked and cruel deed was done, felt ill at ease. She pushed the subject away, and tried to bury it out of sight as we bury the dead, but did not find the task an easy one.
What followed the birth and removal of Edith's baby up to the time of her return to reason after long struggle for life, has already been told. Her demand to have her baby—“Oh, mother, bring me my baby! I shall die if you do not!” and the answer, “Your baby is in heaven!”—sent the feeble life-currents back again upon her heart. There was another long period of oblivion, out of which she came very slowly, her mind almost as much a blank as the mind of a child.
She had to learn again the names of things, and to be taught their use. It was touching to see the untiring devotion of her father, and the pleasure he took in every new evidence of mental growth. He went over the alphabet with her, letter by letter, many times each day, encouraging her and holding her thought down to the unintelligible signs with a patient tenderness sad yet beautiful to see; and when she began to combine letters into words, and at last to put words together, his delight was unbounded.