he nurse
hysterically. She had been tending that curious baby for three hours,
and she was on the verge of a break-down. There was no wet-nurse to be
had, but a woman from the village had been sent for. She was expected
every moment.

"More like a tadpole than anything," mused the unhappy father.

"Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, _don't_," cried the nurse. "If you
only knew...."

"Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at the motionless figure of
his son, who lay with closed eyes, apparently unconscious.

"There's something--I don't know," began the nurse, and then after a
pause, during which she seemed to struggle for some means of expression,
she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll know when it opens
its eyes. Oh! Why doesn't that woman come, the woman you sent for?"

"She'll be 'ere directly," replied Stott. "What d'you mean about there
bein' something ... something what?"

"Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction. "I do wish that woman
would come. I've been up the best part of the night, and now ..."

"Uncanny? As how?" persisted Stott.

"Not normal," explained the nurse. "I can't tell you more than that."

"But 'ow? What way?"

He did not receive an answer then, for the long expected relief came at
last, a great hulk of a woman, who became voluble when she saw the child
she had come to nurse.

"Oh! dear, oh! dear," the stream began. "How unforchnit, and 'er first,
too. It'll be a idjit, I'm afraid. Mrs. 'Arrison's third was the very
spit of it...."

The stream ran on, but Stott heard no more. An idiot! He had fathered an
idiot! That was the end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had an
hour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out to his work at the
County Ground with a heart full of blasphemy.

When he returned at four o'clock he met the stout woman on the doorstep.
She put up a hand to her rolling breast, closed her eyes tightly, and
gasped as though completely overcome by this trifling rencounter.

"'Ow is it?" questioned the obsessed Stott.

"Oh dear! Oh dear!" panted the stout woman, "the leas' thing upsets me
this afternoon...." She wandered away into irrelevant fluency, but Stott
was autocratic; his insistent questions overcame the inertia of even
Mrs. Reade at last. The substance of her information, freed from
extraneous matter, was as follows:

"Oh! 'ealthy? It'll live, I've no doubt, if that's what you mean; but
'elpless...! There, 'elpless is no word...