After that he always called her "mother."
The other two children she scarcely ever saw. The need for keeping
Arthur quiet was so vital, that of course they were not admitted to his
room, and she herself rarely left it. Dim and far away seemed all the
world, and especially her own poor life, whether happy or miserable,
compared with that frail existence, which hung almost upon a thread.
At last the medical opinion was given that little Arthur might, with
great care and incessant watching ("which it is plain he will have, Mrs.
Grey," added the old doctor, bowing and smiling), grow up to be a man
yet.
When Dr. Anstruther said this, Christian felt as if the whole world had
brightened.
She had no one to tell her joy to, for Dr. Grey was out, but she stood in
her familiar retreat at the window--oh, what that window could have
revealed of the last few weeks!--and her tears, long dried up, poured
down like summer rain.
And then Dr. Grey came in, very much agitated; he had met the doctor
in the street and been told glad tidings. She had to compel herself into
sudden quietness, for her husband's sake, which, indeed, was a lesson
now daily being learned, and growing every day sweeter in the
learning.
"Christian," he said, when they had talked it all over, and settled when
and where Arthur was first to go out of doors, with various other matter
of fact things which she thought would soonest calm the father's
emotion--"Christian, Dr.
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