lighted either, is it, duck?"

"No mother. When Osborn goes out in the evenings, I don't light one
just for myself after these warm days."

"You should, my love. Really you should make yourself more
comfortable."

"Now, mother, I'm sure you never lighted fires for yourself when
father was out, unless it was to keep all the pipes in the place from
freezing solid. I'm sure you screwed and skimped and saved and worried
along, as all we other fools of women do."

Mrs. Amber did not deny this, knowing it to be true; she said
something remote, however, about the pleasure of women being duty, and
their duty sacrifice.

Marie remained limp in her chair.

"The point is, mother, that I don't know how to tell Osborn."

"Well, my love, let me tell him."

"Oh, mother," said Marie, "would you?"

"I'll tell him with pleasure. You go to bed, and I'll wait here to
tell him when he comes in."

"Supposing he's very late?"

"He won't be later than the last Tube train. I shall get home
comfortably, my love; don't you worry about me. We old women can take
care of ourselves, you know. It's ten o'clock, and you go off to bed."

"I don't know that I want to, mother."

"Shoo!" said Mrs. Amber.

When Marie was in bed, her mother went to the dining-room, established
herself in an armchair, and put a match to the fire. Her husband being
long dead, she regarded her own sacrificial days as over, and she
remained tolerably comfortable on what he had left behind him. In the
days of his life, the money had taken him away to those vague haunts
of men; but now it solaced, every penny of it, his widow. As she sat
by the kindled fire, Mrs. Amber resumed her knitting, and as she
knitted she wondered fondly what the new baby would be like; whether
it would be boy or girl, and just exactly what piece of work she had
better get in hand against its arrival.

So Osborn Kerr, arriving home not very late--it was only just after
eleven o'clock--found his mother-in-law seated alone upon his hearth,
needles flying over one of the pale blue jerseys in which little
George was to winter.

She greeted his stare of astonishment placidly, with her propitiating
smile and deceitful words:

"I thought you would be cold, Osborn, so I put a match to the fire."

"Oh, thanks," said Osborn, "thanks very much. Where's Marie?"

"She's gone to bed."

"Gone to bed, and left you here by yourself!" Then a thought assailed
him: "I say," he asked himself, "is she