How came she to love the boy so? Years back, in her own horrible extremity of misery, she could remember a week or two of a brief, strange, exquisite happiness, which came to her in the midst of her degradation and desertion, and for a few days a baby in her arms, with eyes like Philip’s . It was taken from her, after a few days — only sixteen days. Insanity came upon her, as her dead infant was carried away:— insanity, and fever, and struggle — ah! who knows how dreadful? She never does. There is a gap in her life which she never can recal quite. But George Brand Firmin, Esq., M.D., knows how very frequent are such cases of mania, and that women who don’t speak about them often will cherish them for years after they appear to have passed away. The Little Sister says, quite gravely, sometimes, “They are allowed to come back.

They do come back. Else what’s the good of little cherubs bein’ born, and smilin’, and happy, and beautiful — say, for sixteen days, and then an end? I’ve talked about it to many ladies in grief sim’lar to mine was, and it comforts them. And when I saw that child on his sick bed, and he lifted his eyes, I knew him, I tell you, Mrs. Ridley. I don’t speak about it; but I knew him, ma’am; my angel came back again. I know him by the eyes. Look at ’em. Did you ever see such eyes? They look as if they had seen heaven. His father’s don’t.” Mrs. Ridley believes this theory solemnly, and I think I know a lady, nearly connected with myself, who can’t be got quite to disown it. And this secret opinion to women in grief and sorrow over their new-born lost infants Mrs. Brandon persists in imparting　Don’t your speeches of ten years ago — maimed, distorted, bloated.

“I know a case,” the nurse murmurs, “of a poor mother who lost her child at sixteen days old; and sixteen years after, on the very day, she saw him again.”Philip knows so far of the Little Sister’s story, that he is the object of this delusion, and, indeed, it very strangely and tenderly affects him. He remembers fitfully the illness through which the Little Sister tended him, the wild paroxysms of his fever, his head throbbing on her shoulders — cool tamarind drinks which she applied to his lips — great gusty night shadows flickering through the bare school dormitory — the little figure of the nurse .

He must be aware of the recognition, which we know of, and which took place at his bedside, though he has never mentioned it — not to his father, not to Caroline. But he clings to the woman and shrinks from the man. Is it instinctive love and antipathy? The special reason for his quarrel with his father the junior Firmin has never explicitly told me then or since. I have known sons much more confidential, and who, when their fathers tripped and stumbled, would bring their acquaintances to jeer at the patriarch in his fall.One day, as Philip enters Thornhaugh Street, and the Sister’s little parlour there, fancy his astonishment on finding his father’s dingy friend, the Rev. Tufton Hunt, at his ease by the fireside.
“Surprised to see me here, eh?” says the dingy gentleman, with a sneer at Philip’s lordly face of wonder and disgust. “Mrs. Brandon and I turn out to be very old friends.”