ughter.

"That's just the most magnificently romantic thing I ever heard," she
cried. "Come now, this requires further investigation. What's our baby
like, Dr. Knott? I've seen nothing but an indistinguishable mass of
shawls and flannels. Have we, by chance, got an angelic monstrosity
up-stairs without being aware of it?"

"Charlotte!" Roger Ormiston called out sternly. The young man looked
positively dangerous. "This conversation has gone quite far enough. I
agree with March, it may all be stuff and nonsense, not worth a second
thought, still it isn't a thing to joke about."

"Very well, dear boy, be soothed then," she returned, making a little
grimace and putting her head on one side coquettishly. "I'll be as
solemn as nine owls. But you must excuse a momentary excitement. It's
all news to me, you know. I'd no notion Katherine had married into such
a remarkable family. I'm bound to learn a little more. Do you believe
it's possible at all, Dr. Knott, now tell me?"

"The fulfilment of prophecy is rather a wide and burning question to
embark on," he said. "With Captain Ormiston's leave, I think we'd
better go back to the point we started from and drink the little
gentleman's health. I have my patient to see again, and it is getting
rather late."

The lady addressed, laughed, held up her glass, and stared round the
table with a fine air of bravado, looking remarkably pretty.

"Fire away, Roger, dear fellow," she said. "We're loaded, and ready."

Thus admonished, Ormiston raised his glass too. But his temper was not
of the sweetest, just then; he spoke forcedly.

"Here's to the boy," he said; "good luck, and good health, and," he
added hastily, "please God he'll be a comfort to his mother."

"Amen," Julius said softly.

Dr. Knott contemplated the contents of his glass, for a moment, whether
critically or absently it would have been difficult to decide. But all
the harshness had gone out of his face, and his loose lips worked into
a smile pathetic in quality.

"To the baby.--And I venture to add a clause to your invocation of that
heartless jade, Dame Fortune. May he never lack good courage and good
friends. He will need both."

Julius March set down his wine untasted. He had received a very
disagreeable impression.

"Come, come, it appears to me, we are paying these honours in a most
lugubrious spirit," Mrs. Ormiston broke in. "I wish the baby a long
life and a merry one, in defiance of all prophecies and t