er seen Baby," said Edie.

"Of course I have, but not for some months."

They went upstairs to look at Baby, who was lying asleep in his cot.
Jenny felt oppressed by the smallness of the bedroom and the many
enlargements of Bert's likeness in youth which dwarfed every other
ornament. They recurred everywhere in extravagantly gilt frames; and the
original photograph was on the chest of drawers opposite one of Edie
wearing a fringe and balloon sleeves.

"There's another coming in five months," said Edie.

"Go on. How many more?"

"I don't know--plenty yet, I expect."

The magic of home that for a few moments had enchanted the little house
was dispelled. Moreover, at tea Norman smeared his face with jam, and
snatched, and kicked his mother because she slapped his wrist.

"Why do you let him behave so bad?" asked Jenny, unconscious that she
was already emulating her own hated Aunt Mabel.

"I don't, only he's such a handful; and his dad spoils him. Besides,
anything for a bit of peace and quiet. Bert never thinks what a worry
children is, and as if I hadn't got enough to look after, he brought
back a dog last week."

"Why don't you tell him off?"

"Oh, it's easier to humor him. You'll find that out quick enough when
you're married yourself."

"Me married? I don't think."

On the way to the theater that evening Jenny almost made up her mind to
join Maurice, and would probably have been constant to her resolve, had
it not been for one of those trivial incidents which more often than
great events change the whole course of a life.

Because she did not like the idea of sitting in meditation opposite a
row of inquisitive faces, she took a seat outside the tramcar that came
swaying and clanging down the Camberwell New Road. It was twilight by
now, and, as the tramcar swung round into Kennington Gate, there was a
wide view of the sky full of purple cloudbanks, islands in a pale blue
luminous sea where the lights of ships could easily be conjured from the
uncertain stars contending with the afterglow of an April sunset. Jenny
sat on the back seat and watched along the Kennington Road the
incandescent gas suffuse room after room with a sickly phosphorescence
in which the inhabitants seemed to swim like fish in an aquarium. All
the rooms thus illuminated looked alike. All the windows had a fretwork
of lace curtains; all the tables were covered with black and red
checkered cloths on which was superimposed half a white c