d to and fro, often speaking
aloud, throwing up her arms. She leaned from the open window and let
the lightning play freely upon her face: she fancied it had the effect
of restoring her wasted health. Whatever the cause, she felt stronger
and more free from pain than for many months.

At dawn she slept. The striking of a church-clock woke her at nine,
giving her just time to dress with care and set forth to keep her
appointment.

CHAPTER XI

A DISAPPOINTMENT

On ordinary Sundays the Byasses breakfasted at ten o'clock; this
morning the meal was ready at eight, and Bessie's boisterous spirits
declared the exception to be of joyous significance. Finding that
Samuel's repeated promises to rise were the merest evasion, she rushed
into the room where he lay fly-fretted, dragged the pillows from under
his tousled head, and so belaboured him in schoolboy fashion that he
had no choice but to leap towards his garments. In five minutes he
roared down the kitchen-stairs for shaving-water, and in five minutes
more was seated in his shirt-sleeves, consuming fried bacon with
prodigious appetite. Bessie had the twofold occupation of waiting upon
him and finishing the toilet of the baby; she talked incessantly and
laughed with an echoing shrillness which would have given a headache
for the rest of the day to any one of average nervous sensibility.

They were going to visit Samuel's parents, who lived at Greenwich.
Bessie had not yet enjoyed an opportunity of exhibiting her first-born
to the worthy couple; she had, however, written many and long letters
on the engrossing subject, and was just a little fluttered with natural
anxiety lest the infant's appearance or demeanour should disappoint the
expectations she had excited. Samuel found his delight in foretelling
the direst calamities.

'Don't say I didn't advise you to draw it mild,' he remarked whilst
breakfasting, when Bessie had for the tenth time obliged him to look
round and give his opinion on points of costume. 'Remember it was only
last week you told them that the imp had never cried since the day of
his birth, and I'll bet you three half-crowns to a bad halfpenny he
roars all through to-night.'

'Hold your tongue, Sam, or I'll throw something at you!'

Samuel had just appeased his morning hunger, and was declaring that the
day promised to be the hottest of the year, such a day as would bring
out every vice inherent in babies, when a very light tap at the door
c