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348 only give him back his son. So Will stayed. He would have stayed if the man had been a pauper, if he'd loved his little boy like that. You see it is just the way Will would feel about his son. He understood. I wanted him to stay too. I was only sorry that, after all the long nights he had to sit up by the little chap's bed (for first there was an operation before Will began his treatment; and Will wouldn't leave much to the nurses), after the weary nights, the doubtful dawns, the long uncertain journey to the day of the crisis, I was only sorry that Will couldn't bring the little boy he saved home with him (if he saved him) for ours to keep and love. He fought for the life of that child. He wanted it to live awfully; and I, hundreds of miles away, would wake often in the night during the long struggle—at three, at four, at seven when it grows light—and wonder, and hope, and, I suppose you'd call it, pray.

It was just before Christmas that my dread and fear about that little boy's life in Chicago became intermingled with a thrilling hope that was very much nearer home. My startling realisation came so unexpectedly to me after all the waiting, so undreamed, so miraculously a gift of heaven, that I couldn't believe at first that there was any real substantial fact about it. I couldn't, or I wouldn't, I don't know which. I dreaded disappointment. But oh, the mere possibility of such a joy being mine at last, made me so happy that I couldn't help but show a jubilant spirit in my letters. I wrote to Will that somehow, suddenly, I felt that that little boy out there was going to get well; I'd been as doubtful as he last week, but now, unaccountably, I was sure that the dear little fellow