gh the first
months of her pain, and never left her until heaven had sent her
consolation. A day came--of almost terrified delight and wonder--when
the poor widowed girl pressed a child upon her breast--a child, with
the eyes of George who was gone--a little boy, as beautiful as a
cherub. What a miracle it was to hear its first cry! How she laughed
and wept over it--how love, and hope, and prayer woke again in her
bosom as the baby nestled there. She was safe. The doctors who
attended her, and had feared for her life or for her brain, had waited
anxiously for this crisis before they could pronounce that either was
secure. It was worth the long months of doubt and dread which the
persons who had constantly been with her had passed, to see her eyes
once more beaming tenderly upon them.

Our friend Dobbin was one of them. It was he who brought her back to
England and to her mother's house; when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving a
peremptory summons from her Colonel, had been forced to quit her
patient. To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's laugh
of triumph as she watched him, would have done any man good who had a
sense of humour. William was the godfather of the child, and exerted
his ingenuity in the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-boats, and corals
for this little Christian.

How his mother nursed him, and dressed him, and lived upon him; how she
drove away all nurses, and would scarce allow any hand but her own to
touch him; how she considered that the greatest favour she could confer
upon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow the Major occasionally
to dandle him, need not be told here. This child was her being. Her
existence was a maternal caress. She enveloped the feeble and
unconscious creature with love and worship. It was her life which the
baby drank in from her bosom. Of nights, and when alone, she had
stealthy and intense raptures of motherly love, such as God's
marvellous care has awarded to the female instinct--joys how far
higher and lower than reason--blind beautiful devotions which only
women's hearts know. It was William Dobbin's task to muse upon these
movements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made him
divine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could see
with a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him. And
so, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to bear it.

I suppose Amelia's father and mother saw through the int