irs? What were they, so solemn and tall
and silent, moving with inexorable steps, higher and higher?

"Mrs. Nightman, Mrs. Nightman!" she shrieked, and stumbled in agony of
body and horror of mind back to the flickering bedroom, back to the
bed.

And then there was light and a murmur of voices, saying: "We have come
to see how you are feeling, Florence," and sitting by her bed she
recognized the three aunts from Clapton, in their bugles and cameos and
glittering bonnets.

There was a man, too, whom she had only just time to realize was the
doctor, not the undertaker, before she was aware that the final effort
of her tortured body was being made without assistance from her own will
or courage.

She waved away the sympathizers. She was glad to see the doctor and Mrs.
Nightman herding them from the room, like gaunt, black sheep; but they
came back again as inquisitive animals will when, after what seemed a
thousand thousand years of pain, she could hear something crying and the
trickle of water and the singing of a kettle.

Perhaps it was Aunt Fanny who said: "It's a dear little girl."

The doctor nodded, and Mrs. Raeburn stirred, and with wide eyes gazed at
her baby.

"It is Jenny, after all," she murmured; then wished for the warmth of a
new-born child against her breast.

Chapter II: _Fairies at the Christening_

A fortnight after the birth of Jenny, her three great-aunts, black and
stately as ever, paid a second visit to the mother.

"And how is Florrie?" inquired Aunt Alice.

"Going on fine," said Florrie.

"And what is the baby to be called?" asked Aunt Fanny.

"Jenny, and perhaps Pearl as well."

"Jenny?"

"Pearl?"

"Jenny Pearl?"

The three aunts disapproved the choice with combined interrogation.

"We were thinking," announced Aunt Alice; "your aunts were thinking,
Florrie, that since we have a good deal of room at Carminia House----"

"It would be a capital plan for the baby to live with us," went on Aunt
Mary.

"For since our father died" (old Frederick Horner, the chemist, had been
under a laudatory stone slab at Kensal Green for a quarter of a
century), "there has been room and to spare at Carminia House," said
Aunt Fanny.

"The baby would be well brought up," Aunt Alice declared.

"Very well brought up, and sent to a genteel academy for young--ladies."
The break before the last word was due to Miss Horner's momentary but
distinctly perceptible criticism of the unladylike