Great was the rejoicing in the troubled home the next morning. Louis was awake and conscious, knew them all, smiled feebly on his mother, and watched hungrily every movement of Mr. Chessney.
The worst was over; he would gain rapidly now. So the mother said, with eager voice and joyful eyes. Alice looked up questioningly when Mr. Chessney remained silent and grave, and as soon as opportunity came, asked her anxious question:
"Mr. Chessney, I can see that you do not share mamma's joy. Do you think the indications unfavorable?"
"I don't know, Miss Ansted. I am not a physician, only a nurse, and I hope I may be mistaken; but it is true that I am anxious."
And the doctor, when he came, expressed no surprise and no pleasure over the change.
"But then he is so utterly unimpressible!" said the mother, "one might almost as well have a marble statue for a physician."
Yet the statue worked faithfully and tirelessly, and, it must be confessed, hopelessly. To Mr. Chessney he would talk occasionally; and there came a day when that gentleman followed him out to the lawn.
"Do you mean that you have no hope of his recovery?"
"None at all; have not had from the first. Brains like his never recover from such treatment as they have received."
"But, doctor, this is very sudden. Do you mean he will lie there helpless for the rest of his life?"
"I don't think he will lie there three weeks longer, but he may; we are not infallible. I shall have to hasten this morning. Young Marshall came home in a drunken rage last night, and kicked his wife, and she is going to die, I think. I don't know what we doctors would do if this were not a free country, and liquor-sellers had not a right to kill by inches all the people they choose. This victim over whom you are watching is only one of many. That ought to comfort the friends, ought it not? Good-morning."
"I haven't told them," said Mr. Chessney, two hours later, speaking to Claire. He had come out to get a breath of the sweet morning air, and to give Claire the news. During the weeks past, he had been very thoughtful of her anxiety, and very careful that she should receive daily bulletins. "I have not told them, but I must. Miss Benedict, this is the hardest task a man ever has to do. How can I tell that mother that she has robbed herself of her son? She has steadily thwarted for two years every scheme that I devised to help him; and she did not know what she was about, either, poor mother!"