He seemed to bring life and strength with him, and she liked him to nurse her on his knee, which did not grow tired and stiff like her grandfather's.

How should Tony detect anything amiss with her?
She never complained of feeling any pain, and he was glad for her to be very quiet and still while he was busy with his lessons.
But when the summer was ended, and after the damp warm fogs of November were over, and a keen, black frost set in sharply before Christmas--a frost which had none of the beauty of white lime and clear blue skies, but which hung over the city like a pall, and penetrated to every fireside with an icy breath; when only the strong and the healthy, who were well clothed and well fed, could meet it bravely, while the delicate, and sickly, and poverty-stricken, shrank before it, and were chilled through and through, then Dolly drooped and failed altogether.
Even old Oliver's dull ears began to hear a little cough, which seemed to echo from some grave not very far away; and when he drew his little love between his knees, and put on his spectacles to gaze into her face, the dearest face in all the world to him, even his eyes saw something of its wanness, and the hollow lines which had come upon it since the summer had passed away.

The old man felt troubled about her, yet he scarcely knew what to do.

He bought sweetmeats to soothe her cough, and thought sometimes that he must ask somebody or other about a doctor for her; but his treacherous memory always let the thought slip out of his mind.

He intended to take counsel with his sister when she came to see him; but aunt Charlotte was herself very ill with an attack of rheumatism, and could not get up to old Oliver's house..