The Young Physician

e very first evening when she had come upstairs to tuck him in and to kiss him good-night, she sat on the bedstead leaning over him with both her arms round his neck and whispering secrets to him. Very extraordinary they were; and as she told him, her lips were soft on his cheek. She said that only a month before she had expected to have a baby sister for him?she had always longed so much to have a baby girl?and before the first jealousy that had flamed up into his mind had died away, she told him how the baby had been born dead, and how terribly she had felt the disappointment. He wondered, in the dark, if she were crying. "But now that I've got my other baby again," she said, "I am going to forget all about it. Well be ever so happy by ourselves, Eddie, won't we? In the evenings when father is down at businesswe will read together. This time we'll take turns reading, for you're growing such a big boy. And we'll go wonderful walks, only not very far, because Dr. Thornhouse says I'm not strong enough yet. I want you to tell me everything?everything you do and think about at school, because you're all I've got now. And you're part of me, Eddie, really." At this she clutched him passionately. For a moment Edwin was nearly crying, and then, suddenly, he saw another side of it: her expressed feelings were somehow foreign to him and made him ashamed, as did Mr. Leeming's watery eyes when he talked about Arthur's prototype. In the face of this eager emotion he felt ...