She tried to do a little teaching to add to it; but her health was delicate and pupils hard to get. Their small reserve fund melted fast, though Lord Francis worked long after office hours at odd jobs for the sake of the few extra shillings that they brought him. Hard work and poor living brought their usual consequence. When Dr. Chichester broke it very gently to the young husband that there was no getting better for Sydney, he was aware that the two would not probably be parted long. When the young mother died one grey December morning, with her head upon her husband’s shoulder, Mrs. Chichester carried home the baby to her own fast-filling nursery, where sturdy seven-year-old Hugh took at once to “his baby,” as he called her, to distinguish her from red-faced Ronald in the cradle, whose advent had meant so many “hushings” at times when he wished to make a noise. Under Mrs. Chichester’s tender care the little wizened baby girl grew fat and merry, crowing courageously even when Hugh staggered round the room with her held in too tight a clasp. [21] [21] Her young father used to come round to the tall dingy house in the dull old square, when office hours were over, and sit beside the nursery fire, watching Mrs. Chichester, as she put the babies to bed, with an oft-repeated game with the ten bare pink toes of the child upon her knee. His little daughter learned to know him, and to crow and laugh when he came into the nursery and held out his arms for her. He began to look forward to the time when she would learn to call him “Father,” but that was not to be. Easter came late, in the spring following little Sydney’s birth, with hot sun and bitter winds. Dr. Chichester had never had so many cases of pneumonia to attend, and one day a scrawl from Lord Francis’s lodgings told of illness there. He hurried round to find little Sydney’s father in high fever. There was from the first small chance of his recovery, as his strength was not sufficient to fight illness. He would have been altogether glad to go, if it had not been for the thought of his baby girl. “My people cast me off completely,” he said, one day, when the end was near, “and they are not at all likely to receive my child.” [22] [22]
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