* * * * *

Doctors say that _wishing_ to get better has a good deal to do with it.
It did seem so in Mr. Vane's case; he was not afraid to die, but he was
still young, and it seemed to him that if he were spared to live there
were many good and useful things he could do. And he was a happy and
cheerful man; he loved being alive, and he loved this beautiful world,
and longed to make other people as happy as he was himself. Most of all
he loved his wife and children, and his great wish to get well was for
their sake more than for any other reason. And never during the several
illnesses he had had did he wish _quite_ so much to get well as now. For
he had a feeling that if he did not recover a sad shadow would be cast
over Biddy's life--a shadow that would not grow lighter but darker, he
feared, as she came more fully to understand that her folly or childish
naughtiness had been the cause of his illness and death.

'It would leave a sore memory in her mother's heart too,' Mr. Vane said
to himself, 'however much she tried not to let it come between her and
the child.'

And I fear it would have done so.

So Biddy's father did his best to get well. Not by fidgeting and
worrying and thinking of nothing but his own symptoms, but by cheerful
patience. He obeyed the doctor's orders exactly, and forced himself to
believe that the work he would fain have been doing would get done, by
God's help, even though _he_ might not do it; he kept up his interest in
all going on about him, watching with the keenest interest the pretty,
shy approaches of the spring from his window; he read as much as he was