"But, papa, indeed you must go to bed."
Nevertheless, they stood a little longer looking down upon Arthur,
whose breathing grew softer into natural sleep. Then, with a mutual
impulse given by the unity of a common grief the husband and wife
turned and kissed one another.
"God bless you, my darling, my poor children's mother, the first they
ever--"
He stopped, and never finished the sentence.
Chapter 6
_"Love that asketh love again,
Finds the barter naught but pain;
Love that giveth in full store,
Aye receives as much, and more._
_"Love, exacting nothing back,
Never knoweth any lack;
Love, compelling love to pay,
Sees him bankrupt every day."_
LIFE in the sick-room--most of us know what that is; how the whole
world narrows itself within four walls, and every fanciful grief and
morbid imagining slips off, pressed down into nothingness by the
weight of daily, hourly cares, and commonplace, yet all-engrossing
realities.
Christian was a born nurse--and nurses, like poets, are born, not made.
You may recognize the faculty in the little girl of ten years old, as she
steals into your room to bring you your breakfast, and takes the
opportunity to arrange your pillow, and put your drawers in order, and
do any other little helpful office which you may need; and you miss it
painfully in the matron of sixty, who, with perhaps the kindest
intentions, comes to nurse you, taking for granted that she is the best
person you could possibly have about you; and yet you would be
thankful to shut the door upon her, and struggle, suffer, die alone; as
Arthur, child as he was, would rather have died than suffer near his
sick-bed either of his two aunts.
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