expected the maternal instinct to make itself felt when she had had
the baby two or three weeks and had counted on this to help him persuade
her to keep it; but nothing of the sort occurred. Mildred was not unkind
to her baby; she did all that was necessary; it amused her sometimes, and
she talked about it a good deal; but at heart she was indifferent to it.
She could not look upon it as part of herself. She fancied it resembled
its father already. She was continually wondering how she would manage
when it grew older; and she was exasperated with herself for being such a
fool as to have it at all.

"If I'd only known then all I do now," she said.

She laughed at Philip, because he was anxious about its welfare.

"You couldn't make more fuss if you was the father," she said. "I'd like
to see Emil getting into such a stew about it."

Philip's mind was full of the stories he had heard of baby-farming and the
ghouls who ill-treat the wretched children that selfish, cruel parents
have put in their charge.

"Don't be so silly," said Mildred. "That's when you give a woman a sum
down to look after a baby. But when you're going to pay so much a week
it's to their interest to look after it well."

Philip insisted that Mildred should place the child with people who had no
children of their own and would promise to take no other.

"Don't haggle about the price," he said. "I'd rather pay half a guinea a
week than run any risk of the kid being starved or beaten."

"You're a funny old thing, Philip," she laughed.

To him there was something very touching in the child's helplessness. It
was small, ugly, and querulous. Its birth had been looked forward to with
shame and anguish. Nobody wanted it. It was dependent on him, a stranger,
for food, shelter, and clothes to cover its nakedness.

As the train started he kissed Mildred. He would have kissed the baby too,
but he was afraid she would laugh at him.

"You will write to me, darling, won't you? And I shall look forward to
your coming back with oh! such impatience."

"Mind you get through your exam."

He had been working for it industriously, and now with only ten days
before him he made a final effort. He was very anxious to pass, first to
save himself time and expense, for money had been slipping through his
fingers during the last four months with incredible speed; and then
because this examination marked the end of the drudgery: after that the
student had to do with m