expect an answer from you just at this moment. You will naturally wish
to talk it over with her, but I shall be glad if you will let us have an
answer as soon as you can, as it is necessary that we should obtain
another nurse without loss of time."

"What you say seems to me very fair, Captain Clinton," the sergeant
said. "I would give anything, sir, that this shouldn't have happened. I
would rather have shot myself first. I can answer for myself, sir, that
I accept your offer. Of course, I am sorry to lose the child; but a
baby is not much to a man till it gets to know him and begins to talk,
and it will be a satisfaction to know that he is in good hands, with a
far better look-out than I could have given him. I will see my wife,
sir, and let you know in half an hour."

"Do you think that she will consent, Humphreys?"

"I am sure she will," the sergeant said briefly, and then added, "There
is nothing else she could do," and saluting he went out of the room.

"He suspects his wife of having done it on purpose," Dr. Parker said,
speaking for the first time since the sergeant had entered the room. "I
don't say he knows it, but he suspects it. Did you notice how decidedly
he said that she would consent? And I fancy up to now she has had her
own way in everything."

"Well, what do they say?" Mrs. Humphreys asked as her husband entered
the door. He told her shortly the offer that had been made. She laughed
scornfully. "A likely thing that! So they are to have both children, and
I am not to be allowed even to see them; and they are to pick and choose
as to which they like to say is theirs, and we are to be shouldered out
of it altogether! It is just as bad for me not to know which is my boy
as it is for that woman; but they are to take the whole settlement of
things in their hands, my feelings to go for nothing. Of course you told
them that you would not let them do such a thing?"

"I did not tell them anything of the sort. I told them that I accepted
their proposal, and that I could answer for your accepting it too."

"Then you were never more wrong in your life, John Humphreys!" she said
angrily; "I won't consent to anything of the sort. Luck has thrown a
good thing in our hands, and I mean to make the most of it. We ought to
get enough out of this to make us comfortable for life if we work it
well. I did not think that you were such a soft!"

"Soft or not soft, it is going to be done as they propose," her husband
s