The mother, thank Heaven! was very well, and it did one’s heart good to see her in that attitude in which I think every woman, be she ever so plain, looks beautiful—­with her baby at her bosom.  The child was sickly, but she did not see it; we were very poor, but what cared she?  She had no leisure to be sorrowful as I was:  I had my last guinea now in my pocket; and when that was gone—­ah! my heart sickened to think of what was to come, and I prayed for strength and guidance, and in the midst of my perplexities felt yet thankful that the danger of the confinement was over; and that for the worst fortune which was to befall us, my dear wife was at least prepared, and strong in health.

I told Mrs. Stokes that she must let us have a cheaper room—­a garret that should cost but a few shillings; and though the good woman bade me remain in the apartments we occupied, yet, now that my wife was well, I felt it would be a crime to deprive my kind landlady of her chief means of livelihood; and at length she promised to get me a garret as I wanted, and to make it as comfortable as might be; and little Jemima declared that she would be glad beyond measure to wait on the mother and the child.

The room, then, was made ready; and though I took some pains not to speak of the arrangement too suddenly to Mary, yet there was no need of disguise or hesitation; for when at last I told her—­“Is that all?” said she, and took my hand with one of her blessed smiles, and vowed that she and Jemima would keep the room as pretty and neat as possible.  “And I will cook your dinners,” added she; “for you know you said I make the best roly-poly puddings in the world.”  God bless her!  I do think some women almost love poverty:  but I did not tell Mary how poor I was, nor had she any idea how lawyers’, and prison’s, and doctors’ fees had diminished the sum of money which she brought me when we came to the Fleet.

It was not, however, destined that she and her child should inhabit that little garret.  We were to leave our lodgings on Monday morning; but on Saturday evening the child was seized with convulsions, and all Sunday the mother watched and prayed for it:  but it pleased God to take the innocent infant from us, and on Sunday, at midnight, it lay a corpse in its mother’s bosom.  Amen.  We have other children, happy and well, now round about us, and from the father’s heart the memory of this little thing has almost faded; but I do believe that every day of her life the mother thinks of the firstborn that was with her for so short a while:  many and many a time has she taken her daughters to the grave, in Saint Bride’s, where he lies buried; and she wears still at her neck a little little lock of gold hair, which she took from the head of the infant as he lay smiling in his coffin.  It has happened to me to forget the child’s birthday, but to her never; and often in the midst of common talk comes something that shows she is thinking of the child still,—­some simple allusion that is to me inexpressibly affecting.