consoling things. The
mother's flesh, touching the daughter's, remembered a faint pulse felt
long ago and marvelled at this splendid sequel, and lost fear. Since the
past held such a miracle the future mattered nothing. Existence had
justified itself. The watchers were surprised to hear her sigh of
rapture. The daughter's flesh, touching the mother's, remembered life in
the womb, that loving organ that by night and day does not cease to
embrace its beloved, and was the stronger for tasting again that first
best draught of love that the spirit has not yet excelled.

There were footsteps in the corridor, a scuffle and a freshet of
giggling; the nurses were going downstairs after the early morning cup
of tea in the ward kitchen. This laughter that sounded so strange
because it was so late reminded Ellen of the first New Year's Eve that
she and her mother had spent in Edinburgh. They had had no friends to
first foot them, but they had kept it up very well. Mrs. Melville had
played the piano, and Ellen and she had sung half through the
_Student's Song Book_, and they had had several glasses of Stone's
Ginger Ale, and there really had been a glow of firelight and holly
berry brightness, for Mrs. Melville, birdlike in everything, had a
wonderful faculty for bursts of gaiety, pure in tone like a blackbird's
song, which brought out whatever gladness might be latent in any person
or occasion. As twelve chimed out they had stood in front of the
chimneypiece mirror and raised their glasses above their heads, singing,
"Auld Lang Syne" in time with the dancers on the other side of the wall,
who were making such a night of it that several times the house had
seemed likely to fall in.

When they had given three cheers and were sipping from their glasses,
Mrs. Melville had said drolly: "Did ye happen to notice my arm when I
was lifting it? Ye did not, ye vain wee thing, ye were looking at
yourself all the time. But I'll give ye one more chance." And she had
held it up so that her loose sleeve (she was wearing a very handsome
mauve tea-gown bought by Mr. Melville in the temporary delirium of his
honeymoon, from which he had so completely recovered that she never got
another) fell back to her shoulder. "Mother, I never knew you had arms
like that!" She had never before seen them except when they were covered
by an ill-fitting sleeve or, if they had been bare to the elbow,
uninvitingly terminating in a pair of housemaid's gloves or hands