Then Dr. Ashly would have left them; but the woman called him back.
"Share in our great joy, dear friend," she said; "for, had it not been for you, this would never have been. A few weeks ago I should never have received him whom I loved even as I had always loved, but whom my pride would have banished from my door in the face of all his pleadings; but you have softened my heart, and to you we owe this joyful hour. And now you must help me," she continued, with a woman's thoughtful care, "to carry him to my own room upstairs, which is the only comfortable room I have; and there I can nurse him up, and soon have him well again."
And so he was carried up to the room where she had sat alone so many years, and was soon as comfortable as womanly care could make him.
"How natural it all looks here!" he said, glancing around the room. "It is just as it used to be,—isn't it, darling? And I remember it so well,—furnished, to suit you, in crimson, which you still like, as I see by your shawl."
"Yes," she said, with a little blush; "I have always worn it for your sake. You used to say it was just the color to suit me, and I have worn it all these years."
"Darling," said he, looking all about the room, "I see no traces of any one but yourself here. Where is our child,—our little baby boy?"
Agnes Wayland went softly up to him, and put her arms around his neck, as she said,—
"I thought, a few weeks ago, that he was down in the garden under a bed of pansies; but now I know he is in heaven, where you and I will soon join him."