For an instant Geraldine looked at him in surprise he seemed so
agitated; then, thinking to herself that probably his room was in
disorder, and the bed unmade, she dismissed it from her mind, and went
to investigate the well, whose water tasted like that at Carisbrooke
Castle.

Half an hour in all she remained at the farm-house, and that was the
only time she had honored it with her presence until the day when she
came to take her boy away.

Not yet fully recovered from her dangerous illness, she assumed all the
airs of an invalid, and kept her wraps around her, and shrank a little
when her husband put her boy in her lap, and asked her if he was not a
beauty, and did not do justice to Hannah's care, and the brindle cow
whose milk he had fed upon. And in truth he was a healthy, beautiful
child, with eyes as blue as the skies of June, and light chestnut hair,
which lay in thick curls upon his head. But he was strange to Geraldine,
and she was strange to him, and after regarding her a moment with his
great blue eyes, he turned toward Hannah, and with a quivering lip began
to cry for her. And Hannah took him in her arms and hugging him to her
bosom, felt that her heart was breaking. She loved him so much, he had
been so much company for her, and had helped to drive away in part, the
horror with which her life was invested, and now he was going from her;
all she had to love in the wide world, and so far as she knew, the only
living being that loved her with a pure, unselfish love.

"Oh, brother! oh, sister!" she cried, as she covered the baby's dimpled
hands with kisses, "don't take him from me; let me have him; let him
stay awhile longer. I shall die here alone with baby gone."