the Bohemian Ten Exhibition next March.
He wanted--but then, what would be the use? She would listen, of course,
but he would know by the very looks of her face that she would not be
really thinking of what he was saying; and he would be willing to wager
his best canvas that in the very first pause she would tell about the
baby's newest tooth or latest toy. Not but that he liked to hear about
the little fellow, of course; and not but that he was proud as Punch
of him, too; but that he would like sometimes to hear Billy talk of
something else. The sweetest melody in the world, if dinned into one's
ears day and night, became something to be fled from.

And Billy ought to talk of something else, too! Bertram, Jr., wonderful
as he was, really was not the only thing in the world, or even the only
baby; and other people--outsiders, their friends--had a right to
expect that sometimes other matters might be considered--their own, for
instance. But Billy seemed to have forgotten this. No matter whether
the subject of conversation had to do with the latest novel or a trip
to Europe, under Billy's guidance it invariably led straight to Baby's
Jack-and-Jill book, or to a perambulator journey in the Public Garden.
If it had not been so serious, it would have been really funny the way
all roads led straight to one goal. He himself, when alone with Billy,
had started the most unusual and foreign subjects, sometimes, just to
see if there were not somewhere a little bypath that did not bring up in
his own nursery. He never, however, found one.

But it was not funny; it was serious. Was this glorious gift on
parenthood to which he had looked forward as the crowning joy of his
existence, to be nothing but a tragedy that would finally wreck his
domestic happiness? It could not be. It must not be. He must be patient,
and wait. Billy loved him. He was sure she did. By and by this obsession
of motherhood, which had her so fast in its grasp, would relax. She
would remember that her husband had rights as well as her child. Once
again she would give him the companionship, love, and sympathetic
interest so dear to him. Meanwhile there was his work. He must bury
himself in that. And fortunate, indeed, he was, he told himself, that he
had something so absorbing.

It was at this point in his meditations that Bertram rounded a corner
and came face to face with a man who stopped him short with a jovial:

"Isn't it--by George, it is Bertie Henshaw!