"You mean on account of the baby; the next few months will be a trying
time for you; I should be with you."

They continued to walk round and round their apple-tree and Ellen did
not answer for a long while.

"I want you to go to America. I don't care that you should see me
losing my figure."

"We have spent many pleasant hours under this apple-tree."

"Yes, it has been a dear tree," she said.

"And in about six years there will be one who will appreciate this tree
as we have never appreciated it. I can see the little chap running
after the apples."

"But, Ned, it may be a girl."

"Then it will be like you, dear."

She said she would send a telegram and Ned shook the boughs, and their
apple-gathering seemed to be portentous. The sound of apples falling in
the dusk garden, a new life coming into the world! "Dear me," Ned said,
"men have gathered apples and led their fruitful wives towards the
house since the beginning of time." He said these words as he looked
over the waste of water seeing Ireland melting into grey clouds. He
turned and looked towards where the vessel was going. A new life was
about to begin and he was glad of that. "For the next three months I
shall be carried along on the tide of human affairs. In a week, in a
week;" and that evening he entered into conversation with some people
whom he thought would interest him. "It is a curious change," he said,
three weeks later, as he walked home from a restaurant; and he enjoyed
the change so much that he wondered if his love for his wife would be
the same when he returned. "Yes, that will be another change." And for
the next three months he was carried like a piece of wreckage from
hotel to hotel. "How different this life is from the life in Ireland.
Here we live in the actual moment." And he began to wonder. He had not
been thinking five minutes when a knock came to the door, and he was
handed a telegram containing two words: "A boy." He had always felt it
was going to be a boy. "Though it does cost a shilling a word they
might have let me know how she is," he thought. And he lay back in his
chair thinking of his wife--indulging in sensations of her beauty,
seeing her gem-like eyes, her pretty oval face, and her red hair
scattered about the pillow. At first he was not certain whether the
baby was lying by the side of the mother, but now he saw it, and he
thrilled with a sense of wonder. The commonest of all occurrences never
ceases to be the most won