is she----"

"The hospitality of this house is prover--" the precise doctor
recommenced.

"Damn the hospitality!" cried Jacob Dolph: "I mean--oh, doctor--tell
me--is anything wrong?"

"Should I request of you the cup of amity and geniality, Mr. Dolph, were
there cause for anything save rejoicing in this house?" demanded the
physician, with amiable severity. "I had thought that my words would
have conveyed----"

"It's all over?"

"And bravely over!" And the doctor nodded his head with a dignified
cheerfulness.

"And may I go to her?"

"You may, sir, after you have given me my glass of port. But remember,
sir----"

Dolph turned to the sideboard, grasped a bottle and a glass, and thrust
them into the doctor's hand, and started for the door.

"But remember, sir," went on the unperturbed physician, "you must not
agitate or excite her. A gentle step, a tranquil tone, and a cheerful
and encouraging address, brief and affectionate, will be all that is
permitted."

Dolph listened in mad impatience, and was over the threshold before the
doctor's peremptory call brought him back.

"What is it now?" he demanded, impatiently.

The doctor looked at him with a gaze of wonder and reproach.

"It is a male child, sir," he said.

[Illustration]

Jacob Dolph crept up the stairs on tiptoe. As he paused for a moment in
front of a door at the head, he heard the weak, spasmodic wail of
another Dolph.

* * * * *

"There's no help for it--I've got to do it," said Jacob Dolph.

It was another wintry morning, just after breakfast. The snow was on the
ground, and the sleigh-bells up in Broadway sent down a faint jingling.
Ten winters had come and gone, and Mr. Dolph was as comfortably stout as
a man should be who is well fed and forty. He stood with his back to the
fire, pulling at his whiskers--which formed what was earlier known as a
Newgate collar--with his right thumb and forefinger. His left thumb was
stuck in the armhole of his flowered satin waistcoat, black and shiny.

Opposite him sat a man of his own age, clean-shaven and sharp-featured.
He had calm, somewhat cold, gray eyes, a deliberate, self-contained
manner of speaking, and a pallid, dry complexion that suited with his
thin features. His dress was plain, although it was thoroughly neat. He
had no flowered satin waistcoat; but something in his bearing told you
that he was a man who had no anxiety about the narrow things of the
c