d it was when she began to be so really busy, after the
baby came. Baby was crying sometimes as they finished breakfast; she
must hurry to him; it was time for his bath; he must have his bath,
mustn't he? She couldn't help that. But she rather thought that
perhaps this was the beginning of the end of all those dear smiles and
salutes right down the street back to the girl above. Perhaps Osborn
had looked up in vain many mornings, hoping to see her leaning out
there, and at last had ceased to mind whether she were there or not.

A surprise came for Marie after lunch. She was making herself ready to
carry her baby and her basket to the open-air market a street away,
where the thriftier housewives of the neighbourhood shopped, when a
delivery carman left at her door the handsome baby-carriage which
Julia's note had sent Desmond Rokeby out post-haste to buy. Such a
perambulator Marie had never hoped for, nor dreamed of; it boasted
every luxury of contrivance, from the umbrella basket, slung to the
handles, to its C-springs and its big, smooth-rolling tyres. In colour
it was French-grey, extremely dainty; and it came with Desmond's love
to his godson and a tactfully expressed hope that his gift had not
been forestalled. So Marie put her baby in, and her basket, too; and
after she had finished admiring her pink-and-white son among the
lavender upholstery, she wheeled him out proudly to the open-air
market, where the equipage drew forth delighted comments from the
vendors who knew her well. She did not come straight home, as she had
to do when carrying the baby; but, her purchases finished, she turned
towards the Heath, and wheeled about proudly there for a while,
envying no one, not the smart nurses who propelled their smart
perambulators, nor the few mothers who strolled beside them. She felt
that, with the finest baby in town in a French-grey and lavender
chariot, she could meet and beat any turnout of the kind.

Marie sang during the rest of the afternoon when she reached home
again. She sang while she made a cup of tea; sang while she put her
boy to bed, and set about her preparations for her husband's return;
he heard her singing when he fitted his latchkey unobtrusively in the
lock, and stepped, still furtively, into the hall. He breathed freely
again and told himself that the storm had passed.

He sat down by the fire, before which his wife had set his slippers,
but he did not unlace his boots. He was hungry; he cast