Sir Everard could have implored the child to stop. He took the thin hand in his and caressed it.
"Miles is such a baby you know. I did not think you would be jealous of him."
"Jealous?" said Humphrey, rather puzzled; "jealous means angry--doesn't it?"
"Oh, then, I wasn't jealous," said the boy, earnestly, "because I never was angry. Poor little Miles couldn't remember mother, you see, and I could--so it was quite fair. Only now and then--sometimes it----"
"It made me want mother so _dreadfully_," said Humphrey, his eyes filling with tears. "But now," he added, dreamily, for the drowsiness was beginning to overpower him, again, "I'm going to her, or at least God's going to send her to fetch me." And he closed his heavy eyes.
Sir Everard sat on, meditating. He mused on the by-gone time when his wife had told him Humphrey was as loving as Miles and he had inwardly denied it; he mused on the responsibility of bringing up children, and the necessity of living constantly with them to hope to understand the complications of their characters; and sadly he reflected on the irreparable loss his children had sustained in the mother, who would have done it all so well.
He was not a morbid man, and he did not reproach himself for what had been unavoidable; for a man belongs more to the world than to his home; and his home ought not to throw any hindrance in his path of usefulness. But he told himself plainly that he had failed; that, satisfied if his children were well and happy, he had been content to go no further, and to remain in ignorance of all that Humphrey's simple words had disclosed.
He was filled with admiration for the generous nature which had borne so patiently to see another preferred, and had charmed away the feeling which _had_ arisen sometimes, by the reflection, "It is quite fair."
He thought how the same circumstances acting upon a different temperament might have produced jealousy, discontent, and bitter feeling; the little brothers might have grown up to hate each other, and he would never have perceived it. And with an uncontrollable feeling he knelt down by the bedside, and covered the child with kisses.
Humphrey opened his eyes and smiled. "I was dreaming of mother," he said; "she was asking me if you had sent her any message."