ed that he
had been able to keep the nurse longer. He left her reluctantly after
breakfast, to get through the baby's bath and toilet unaided, before
the heavier work of the flat. Women who knew would have understood why
Marie trembled and despaired at the tasks before her. When the baby
cried as, with hands still weakened, she tried to hold up its slipping
little body in the bath, she cried, too. As she cried, she thought how
tears seemed to be always near her eyes during these married days. Was
something wrong with marriage? Before, in her careless girl-days, she
had never wept; she had never so suffered, so wearied and despaired.
While she questioned, she dressed the baby in the flannel and lawn
things she had made for it a long while ago, and when she had dressed
it, she fed it again, and again it slept.

It was astonishing how much heavier a month-old infant could grow
during an hour's marketing.

That reminded her that they had something else to buy, a big thing
that would swallow up nearly, or quite, a week of Osborn's pay, a
perambulator. The baby had luxuries; his toilet set from Rokeby, his
christening robe from Julia, his puffed and frilly baby-basket from
Grannie Amber, were dreams to delight a mother's heart; but he had no
carriage. For a little while she might carry him when she was not too
tired; and when she was, he might sleep out on the balcony that jutted
from the sitting-room window, and she could stay beside him; but
ultimately the question of the perambulator must arise.

As Marie walked home with her baby and her basket, she said to
herself: "I won't ask poor Osborn now; not when he's just paid that
woman a whole six pounds; not till he's settled the doctor; and
there'll be an extra bill for the baby's vaccination soon, and the
next furniture instalment's due; but when all that's cleared off, I'll
choose the right time and ask him. I shall give him an extra nice
dinner, and tell him we'll have to buy one."

In a week, when the doctor called to vaccinate the baby, he ordered
the mother to leave off nursing it herself; he put it upon a patent
food, not a cheap food; and it formed a pertinacious habit of wearing
out best rubber bottle teats quicker than any baby ever known. In the
nights Marie did not now reach out in the darkness to her baby and,
gathering it to herself, nourish it quietly, without the certainty of
waking Osborn; but there had to be a nightlight, there had to be
business with a