nd to the little girl. She looked after her
very well and once when she had a bad cold proved herself a devoted nurse;
but the child bored her, and she spoke to her sharply when she bothered;
she was fond of her, but had not the maternal passion which might have
induced her to forget herself. Mildred had no demonstrativeness, and she
found the manifestations of affection ridiculous. When Philip sat with the
baby on his knees, playing with it and kissing it, she laughed at him.

"You couldn't make more fuss of her if you was her father," she said.
"You're perfectly silly with the child."

Philip flushed, for he hated to be laughed at. It was absurd to be so
devoted to another man's baby, and he was a little ashamed of the
overflowing of his heart. But the child, feeling Philip's attachment,
would put her face against his or nestle in his arms.

"It's all very fine for you," said Mildred. "You don't have any of the
disagreeable part of it. How would you like being kept awake for an hour
in the middle of the night because her ladyship wouldn't go to sleep?"

Philip remembered all sorts of things of his childhood which he thought he
had long forgotten. He took hold of the baby's toes.

"This little pig went to market, this little pig stayed at home."

When he came home in the evening and entered the sitting-room his first
glance was for the baby sprawling on the floor, and it gave him a little
thrill of delight to hear the child's crow of pleasure at seeing him.
Mildred taught her to call him daddy, and when the child did this for the
first time of her own accord, laughed immoderately.

"I wonder if you're that stuck on baby because she's mine," asked Mildred,
"or if you'd be the same with anybody's baby."

"I've never known anybody else's baby, so I can't say," said Philip.

Towards the end of his second term as in-patients' clerk a piece of good
fortune befell Philip. It was the middle of July. He went one Tuesday
evening to the tavern in Beak Street and found nobody there but
Macalister. They sat together, chatting about their absent friends, and
after a while Macalister said to him:

"Oh, by the way, I heard of a rather good thing today, New Kleinfonteins;
it's a gold mine in Rhodesia. If you'd like to have a flutter you might
make a bit."

Philip had been waiting anxiously for such an opportunity, but now that it
came he hesitated. He was desperately afraid of losing money. He had
little of the gambler's spi