gly: "Am I to stay?"

"Perhaps you had better take to Richard's room at once," he pursued. "You
have the Lobourne valley there and a good morning air, and will feel more
at home."

Lucy's colour mounted. Mrs. Berry gave a short cough, as one who should
say, "The day is ours!" Undoubtedly--strange as it was to think it--the
fortress was carried.

"Lucy is rather tired," said Austin, and to hear her Christian name thus
bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her eyes.

The baronet was about to touch the bell. "But have you come alone?" he
asked.

At this Mrs. Berry came forward. Not immediately: it seemed to require
effort for her to move, and when she was within the region of the lamp,
her agitation could not escape notice. The blissful bundle shook in her
arms.

"By the way, what is he to me?" Austin inquired generally as he went and
unveiled the younger hope of Raynham. "My relationship is not so defined
as yours, sir."

An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped at his grandson
with the courteous indifference of one who merely wished to compliment
the mother of anybody's child.

"I really think he's like Richard," Austin laughed. Lucy looked: I am
sure he is!

"As like as one to one," Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but Grandpapa not
speaking she thought it incumbent on her to pluck up. "And he's as
healthy as his father was, Sir Austin--spite o' the might 'a beens.
Reg'lar as the clock! We never want a clock since he come. We knows the
hour o' the day, and of the night."

"You nurse him yourself, of course?" the baronet spoke to Lucy, and was
satisfied on that point.

Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs. Lucy, fearing the
consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him.
"'T'd take a deal to do that," said Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master
Richard's health and the small wonder it was that he enjoyed it,
considering the superior quality of his diet, and the lavish attentions
of his mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a deep sigh.

"He looks healthy," said the baronet, "but I am not a judge of babies."

Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge its new
commandant, who was now borne away, under the directions of the
housekeeper, to occupy the room Richard had slept in when an infant.

Austin cast no thought on his success. The baronet said: "She is
extremely well-looking." He replied: "A person you take to at once."
There it ended.

But a