tood beside the bed.

"Better, dear?" asked this person.

"Where's Mrs Gowler?" whispered Mavis.

"She got tired of waiting, so I came in. I've been here a hour" (she
pronounced the aspirate).

"Who are you?" asked Mavis.

"I'm the 'permanent.'"

"The what?"

"The 'permanent': at least, that's what they call me here. But you
mustn't talk. You've 'ad a bad time."

"Is it a boy or a girl?" asked Mavis.

"A boy. Don't say no more."

Mavis did not know if she were pleased or otherwise with the sex of her
child; she could only thankfully realise that she was free from
torment. She lay back, enjoying to the full her delicious comparative
ease, before lifting the bed clothes to press her lips against her
baby's head. She held it closer to her heart as she realised that its
father was the man she loved. Although the woman who had introduced
herself as the "permanent" had told Mavis not to talk, she did not set
the example of silence. While she busied herself about and in and out
of the room, she talked incessantly, chiefly about herself. For a long
time, Mavis was too occupied with her own thoughts to pay any attention
to what she was saying. Before she listened to the woman's gossip, she
was more intent on taking in the details of her appearance. Mavis could
not make up her mind whether she was young, old, or middle-aged; she
might so easily have been one of these. Her face was not unpleasant,
although her largish dark eyes were quite close to her snub nose, over
which the eyebrows met. Her expression was that of good-natured
simplicity, while her movements and manner of speaking betrayed great
self-consciousness, the result of an immense personal vanity. She was
soon to be a mother.

"It's my eighth, and all by different fathers," she told Mavis, who
wondered at the evident pride with which the admission was made, till
the woman added: "When you have had eight, and all by different
fathers, it proves how the gentlemen love you."

Mavis, for all her exhaustion, could not help smiling at the
ingenuousness of the "permanent's" point of view. Seeing Mavis smile,
the woman laughed also, but her hilarity was inspired by self-conscious
pride.

"P'raps you wonder what's become of the little dears. Three's dead,
two's 'dopted, an' two is paid for at five bob a week by the
gentlemen," she informed Mavis. She then asked: "I'spose this is your
first?"

Mavis nodded.

"My! You're a baby at it. I 'spect I'll have a do