I entered the bedroom where my patient lay. The child's arms encircled my neck. My heart was beating quickly, anxiously. Little Nancy looked at me in surprise.
Mainwaring's eyes were open. I put the child on the floor.
"Are you ill, dad?" she repeated, in a clear, high voice.
He stretched out one of his hands. The child caught it and covered it with kisses.
"Send your mother to me, my sweet Nan," he said, after a pause.
Then I knew that Mainwaring had got back his ten years.
It is late in the day to refer to Mr. Edward Lloyd as possessing the right to the position of our leading British tenor--indeed, it might be said to that of one of the first tenors in the world. Mr. Lloyd has won his way to this position simply by the earnest sincerity which has characterized everything he has undertaken--added, of course, to great natural gifts. Since eleven years of age he has always been a working man, and has laboured with a set purpose always before him. His heart and soul are as much in a simple little ballad as in an operatic selection. The public have felt this, and have not been slow in letting it be known. He is, in many ways, a remarkable man. If there is anyone who is prone to be spoiled by a community ever ready to pamper a popular individual, it is a tenor. But from what I have seen--and my opportunities have been peculiar ones--of Mr. Edward Lloyd, he impressed me as being a man who sets his face against all flattery, no matter how honestly it may be deserved. There is absolutely nothing professional about him. In a word, he is about as perfect a specimen of an Englishman as one would wish to meet, and as one who loves his home and its associations, may be held up as a model man. Of medium height and stalwart appearance, with a countenance which is a happy hunting ground for smiles, you no sooner feel the grip of his hand than you know you have met a man brimming over with good nature, honest intention, and unadulterated sincerity.
Previous to the interview proper we made a hurried trip to Brighton, where for three or four months every year Mr. Lloyd, together with his family, migrates, and where he has a pretty little house within a stone-throw of Mr. Edmund Yates's. Its blue tile window-boxes are full of the greenest of evergreens, and flowers are working out their own notions of decorative art everywhere. Here the walls are given up to a magnificent collection of hunting pictures. The dining-room has many exquisite bronzes, and passing by an old grandfather's clock in the hall--picked up in a Devonshire cottage one holiday time, and in which, to the methodical tick, tick, tick, of the works, a ship keeps time on some linen waves--a peep into the drawing-room reveals many a portrait of professional brothers and sisters--Santley, Maybrick, Antoinette Sterling, Lady Hallé, etc., with a number of water-colours by Danby, Enoch, and Prout.
