Next day a paragraph in the papers told how Mr. Eustace Lane had bought
up all the penny toys of the Strand. Mention was again made of his
supposed mission to the Vatican, and a picture drawn of the bewilderment
of the Holy Father, roused from contemplation of the eternal to
contemplation of jumping pasteboard, and the frigid gestures of people
from the world of _papier-mache_.

Eustace showed the paragraph to Winifred.

"Why will they chronicle all I do?" he said, with a sigh.

"Would you rather they did not?"

"Oh, if it amuses them," he answered. "To amuse the world is to be its
benefactor."

"No, to comfort the world," was Winifred's silent thought. .

To her the world often seemed a weary invalid, playing cards on the
coverlet of the bed from which it longed in vain to move, peeping with
heavy eyes at the shrouded windows of its chamber, and listening for
faint sounds from without--soft songs, soft murmurings, the breath of
winds, the sigh of showers; then turning with a smothered groan to its
cards again, its lengthy game of "Patience." Clubs, spades, hearts,
diamonds--there they all lay on the coverlet ready to the hands of the
invalid. But she wanted to take them away, and give to the sufferer a
prayer and a hope.

At this period she was often full of a vague, chaotic tenderness,
far-reaching, yet indefinite. She could rather have kissed the race than
a person.

And so the days went by, Winifred in a dream of wonder, Eustace in the
toy-shops.

Until the birthday dawned and faded.

All through that day Eustace was in agony. He did not care so much for
the child, but he loved the mother. Her danger tore at his heart. Her
pain smote him, till he seemed to feel it actually and physically. That
she was giving him something was naught to him; that she might be taken
away in the giving was everything. And when he learnt that all was well,
he cried and prayed, and thought to himself afterwards, "If Winifred
could know what I am like, what I have done to-day, how would it strike
her?"

She did not know; for when at length Eustace was admitted to her room,
he trained himself to murmur, "A girl, that's lucky because of all the
dolls. The Pope sha'n't have even one now."

Winifred lay back white on her pillow, and a little frown travelled
across her face. If Eustace had just kissed her, and she had felt a tear
of his on her face, and he had said nothing, she could have loved him
then as a father, perhaps,