s are probable. It grew close, heavy, and perilous.

Mrs. Knight shook her head again. 'Nothing,' she managed to reply.

'Susan wants----' Mr. Knight began suavely to explain.

'He keeps on saying he would like him to be called----' Mrs. Knight
burst out.

'No I don't--no I don't!' Mr. Knight interrupted. 'Not if you don't
wish it!'

A silence followed. Mr. Knight drummed lightly and nervously on the
table-cloth. Mrs. Knight sniffed, threw back her head so that the tears
should not fall out of her eyes, and gently patted the baby's back with
her right hand. Aunt Annie hesitated whether to speak or not to speak.

Tom remarked in a loud voice:

'If I were you, I should call him Tom, like me. Then, as soon as he can
talk, I could say, "How do, Cousin Tom?" and he could say back, "How do,
Cousin Tom?"'

'But we should always be getting mixed up between you, you silly boy!'
said Aunt Annie, smiling, and trying to be bright and sunny.

'No, you wouldn't,' Tom replied. 'Because I should be Big Tom, and of
course he'd only be Little Tom. And I don't think I'm a silly boy,
either.'

'Will you be silent, sir!' Mr. Knight ordered in a voice of wrath. And,
by way of indicating that the cord of tension had at last snapped, he
boxed Tom's left ear, which happened to be the nearest.

Mrs. Knight lost control of her tears, and they escaped. She offered
the baby to Aunt Annie.

'Take him. He's asleep. Put him in the cradle,' she sobbed.

'Yes, dear,' said Aunt Annie intimately, in a tone to show how well she
knew that poor women must always cling together in seasons of stress and
times of oppression.

Mrs. Knight hurried out of the room. Mr. Knight cherished an injury. He
felt aggrieved because Susan could not see that, though six months ago
she had been entitled to her whims and fancies, she was so no longer. He
felt, in fact, that Susan was taking an unfair advantage of him. The
logic of the thing was spread out plainly and irrefutably in his mind.
And then, quite swiftly, the logic of the thing vanished, and Mr. Knight
rose and hastened after his wife.

'You deserved it, you know,' said Aunt Annie to Tom.

'Did I?' The child seemed to speculate.

They both stared at the baby, who lay peacefully in his cradle, for
several minutes.

'Annie, come here a moment.' Mr. Knight was calling from another room.

'Yes, Henry. Now, Tom, don't touch the cradle. And if baby begins to
cry, run and tell me.'

'Yes, auntie.'