It is just one year since the summer morning when Matty Kennedy took upon herself a second time the duties of a wife, and now she lies in a darkened room, her face white as the winter snow, and her breath scarcely perceptible to the touch, as it comes faintly from her parted lips. In dignified¹ silence the doctor sits by, counting her feeble pulse, while an expression of pride and almost perfect happiness breaks over his face as he glances toward the cradle which Hannah has brought from the garret, and where now slept the child born to him that day. His oft-repeated maxim² that if the first were not a boy the second ought to be, had prevailed at last, and Dombey had a son. It was a puny³ thing, but the father said it looked as Nellie did when she first rested there, and Nellie, holding back her breath and pushing aside her curls, bent⁴ down to see the red-faced infant.

 

"I was never as ugly as that, and I don't love him a bit!" she exclaimed, turning away in disgust; while Maude approached on tip-toe, and kneeling by the cradle side kissed the unconscious sleeper⁵, whispering as she did so, "I love you, poor little brother."

 

Darling Maude—blessed Maude—in all your after life you proved the truth of those low spoken words, "I love you, poor little brother."

 

For many days did Mrs. Kennedy hover⁷ between life and death, never asking for her baby, and seldom noticing her husband, who, while declaring there was no danger, still deemed it necessary, in case anything should happen, to send for his sister, Mrs. Kelsey, who had not visited him since his last marriage. She was a proud, fashionable woman, who saw nothing attractive in the desolate⁸ old house, and who had conceived an idea that her brother's second wife was a sort of nobody whom he had picked up among the New England hills. But the news of her illness

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