girl were in trouble, and the necessity
arose, Mr. Drake would be the first to help her. Of course, he had a
great deal to say that was as sweet as syrup on the loyalty of my own
friendship also, and he expended much beautiful rhetoric on yourself as
well. It seems that you are one of those who follow the impulse of the
heart entirely, while the rest of us divide our allegiance with the head;
and if you display sometimes the severity of a tyrant of our sex, that is
only to be set down as another proof of your regard and of the elevation
of the pedestal whereon you desire us to be placed. Thus he reconciles me
to the harmony of the universe, and makes all things easy and agreeable.

"This being the case, I have now to inform you that Polly's baby has
come, having hastened his arrival (it is a man, bless it!) owing either
to the tears or the terrors of the crocodile. And being on night duty
now, and therefore at liberty from 6.30 to 8.30, I intend to pay him my
first call of ceremony this evening, when anybody else would be welcome
to accompany me who might be willing to come to his shrine of innocence
and love in the spirit of the wise men of the East. But, lest anybody
_should_ inquire for me at the hospital at the first of the hours
aforesaid, this is to give warning that the White Owl has expressly
forbidden all intercourse between the members of her staff and the
discharged and dishonoured mother. Set it down to my spirit of
contradiction that I intend to disregard the mandate, though I am only
too well aware that the poor discharged and dishonoured one has no other
idea of friendship than that of a loyalty in which she shares but is not
sharing. Of course, woman is born to such selfishness as the sparks fly
upward; but if I should ever meet with a man who isn't I will just give
myself up to him--body and soul and belongings--unless he has a wife or
other encumbrance already and is booked for this world, and in that event
I will enter into my own recognisances and be bound over to him for the
next. Glory."

At six-thirty that evening Glory stood waiting in the portico of the
hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the
bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall
and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a
good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and even familiar
in a moment.

"Are you the young lady from the hospital?