‘Biddy,’ whispered her father, ‘here is mamma.’

Bridget’s face worked for a moment, then she flung her arms round her mother’s neck.

‘Mamma, mamma,’ she whispered, ’I’m going to try to be good—­if only you’ll forgive me.  I don’t want to die if I can be good and help to nurse papa.  Mamma, there was something very sorry came into my heart when papa got me out of the water and I saw how white he was.  But I wouldn’t listen to it, and it got hard and horrid.  But now it’s come again—­Celestina began it, and I will be good—­and don’t you think God will make papa better?’

I don’t think Mrs. Vane had ever kissed Biddy as she kissed her then.

* * * * *

Doctors say that wishing to get better has a good deal to do with it.  It did seem so in Mr. Vane’s case; he was not afraid to die, but he was still young, and it seemed to him that if he were spared to live there were many good and useful things he could do.  And he was a happy and cheerful man; he loved being alive, and he loved this beautiful world, and longed to make other people as happy as he was himself.  Most of all he loved his wife and children, and his great wish to get well was for their sake more than for any other reason.  And never during the several illnesses he had had did he wish quite so much to get well as now.  For he had a feeling that if he did not recover a sad shadow would be cast over Biddy’s life—­a shadow that would not grow lighter but darker, he feared, as she came more fully to understand that her folly or childish naughtiness had been the cause of his illness and death.

‘It would leave a sore memory in her mother’s heart too,’ Mr. Vane said to himself, ’however much she tried not to let it come between her and the child.’

And I fear it would have done so.

So Biddy’s father did his best to get well.  Not by fidgeting and worrying and thinking of nothing but his own symptoms, but by cheerful patience.  He obeyed the doctor’s orders exactly, and forced himself to believe that the work he would fain have been doing would get done, by God’s help, even though he might not do it; he kept up his interest in all going on about him, watching with the keenest interest the pretty, shy approaches of the spring from his window; he read as much as he was allowed, and helped Rough with his lessons in the evening, and had a bright smile for everybody at all times.

‘I almost feel as if he were too good to live,’ said Mrs. Fairchild one evening to Celestina and her father, when she had returned from a visit to the rectory.  But this time it was Mr. Fairchild’s turn to speak cheerily, for he too had been spending an hour or two with the invalid that day.

‘I saw a decided improvement to-day,’ he said.  ’I do think Mr. Vane’s patience is wonderful, but I have a strong feeling that he is really beginning to gain ground.’