Thought of it? She had thought of nothing else, lying awake at night, waiting for the baby's cry; sitting in the daytime, st.i.tching at the small garments that were always just too small.

"Of course," she said, submissively. She was willing to yield the glory of the idea to him.

"Well," he said, "I don't know how we're going to manage it. One thing I do know--there mustn't be any more of them. I can't afford it."

He had said that before so often that Aggie had felt inclined to tell him that she couldn't afford it, either. But to-night she was silent, for he didn't know she knew. And as she saw that he (who did know) was trying to spare her, she blessed him in her heart.

If he did not tell her everything that the doctor had said, he told her that Willie was all right. Willie had been declared to be a child of powerful health. They weren't to coddle him. As if any one _had_ coddled him! Poor Aggie only wished she had the time.

But now that her release had come, she would have time, and strength, too, for many things that she had had to leave undone. She would get nearer to her children, and to her husband, too. Even at four o'clock in the morning, Aggie had joy in spite of her mortal weariness, as she rocked the sleepless baby on the sad breast that had never suckled him. She told the baby all about it, because she couldn't keep it in.

"My beauty," she murmured, "he will always be my baby. He sha'n't have any little brothers or sisters, never any more. There--there--there, did they--? Hsh-sh-sh, my sweet pet, my lamb. My little king--he shall never be dethroned. Hush, hush, my treasure, or he'll wake his poor Daddy, he will."

In another room, on his sleepless pillow, the baby's father turned and groaned.

All the next day, and the next, Aggie went about with a light step, and with eyes that brightened like a bride's, because of the spring of new love in her heart.

It came over her now how right Arthur had been, how she ought to have kept it up, and how fearfully she had let it go.

Not only the lectures--what did they matter?--but her reading, her music, everything, all the little arts and refinements by which she had once captured Arthur's heart--"Things," she said, "that made all the difference to Arthur." How forbearing and constant he had been!

That evening she dressed her hair and put flowers on the supper-table.

Arthur opened his eyes at the unusual appearance, but said nothing. She could see that he was cross about something--something that had occurred in the office, probably. She had never grudged him his outbursts of irritability. It was his only dissipation. Aggie had always congratulated herself on being married to a good man.

Coffee, the beloved luxury they had so long renounced, was served with that supper. But neither of them drank it. Arthur said he wasn't going to be kept awake two nights running, and after that, Aggie's heart was too sore to eat or drink anything. He commented bitterly on the waste. He said he wondered how on earth they were going to pay the doctor's bills, at that rate.

Aggie pondered. He had lain awake all night thinking of the doctor's bills, had he? And yet that was just what they were to have no more of.

Anyhow, he had been kept awake; and, of course, that was enough to make him irritable.

So Aggie thought she would soothe him to sleep. She remembered how he used to go to sleep sometimes in the evenings when she played. And the music, she reflected with her bitterness, would cost nothing.

But music, good music, costs more than anything; and Arthur was fastidious. Aggie's fingers had grown stiff, and their touch had lost its tenderness. Of their old tricks they remembered nothing, except to stumble at a "stretchy" chord, a perfect bullfinch of a chord, bristling with "accidentals," where in their youth they had been apt to shy. Arthur groaned.

"Oh, Lord, there won't be a wink of sleep for either of us if you wake that brat again. What on earth possesses you to strum?"

But Aggie was bent, just for the old love of it, and for a little obstinacy, on conquering that chord.

"Oh, stop it!" he cried. "Can't you find something better to do?"

"Yes," said Aggie, trying to keep her mouth from working, "perhaps I could find something."

Arthur looked up at her from under his eyebrows, and was ashamed.

She thought still of what she could do for him; and an inspiration came.

He had always loved to listen to her reading. Her voice had not suffered as her fingers had; and there, in its old place on the shelf, was the Browning he had given her.

"Would you like me to read to you?"

"Yes," he said, "if you're not too tired." He was touched by the face he had seen, and by her pathetic efforts; but oh, he thought, if she would only understand.

She seated herself in the old place opposite him, and read from where the book fell open of its own accord.

"'O, lyric Love, half angel and half bird'"--

Her voice came stammering like a child's, choked with tenderness and many memories--

"'And all a wonder and a wild desire--'"

"Oh no, I say, for Heaven's sake, Aggie, not that rot."

"You--you used to like it."

"Oh, I dare say, years ago. I can't stand it now."

"Can't stand it?"

Again he was softened.

"Can't understand it, perhaps, my dear. But it comes to the same thing."

"Yes," said Aggie, "it comes to the same thing."

And she read no more. For the first time, for many years, she understood him.

That night, as they parted, he did not draw her to him and kiss her; but he let her tired head lean towards him, and stroked her hair. Her eyes filled with tears. She laid her forehead on his shoulder.

"Poor Aggie," he said, "poor little woman."

She lifted her head suddenly.

"It's poor you," she whispered, "poor, poor dear."

VIII

"Now, isn't it a pity for you to be going, dearie? When the place is doing you so much good, and Susie back in another week, and all."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Now, isn't it a pity for you to be going, dearie?'"]

Aggie folded up a child's frock with great deliberation, and pressed it, gently but firmly, into the portmanteau.

"I must go," she said, gravely. "Arthur wants me."

Mrs. Purcell was looking on with unfeigned grief at her daughter's preparations for departure. Aggie had gone down to Queningford, not for a flying visit, but to spend the greater part of the autumn. She and Arthur had had to abandon some of the arrangements they had planned together; and, though he had still insisted in general terms on Aggie's two years'

rest, the details had been left to her. Thus it happened that a year of the rest-cure had hardly rolled by before Aggie had broken down, in a way that had filled them both with the gravest anxieties for the future. For if she broke down when she was resting, what would she do when the two years were up and things had to be more or less as they were before? Aggie was so frightened this time that she was glad to be packed off to her mother, with Willie and d.i.c.k and Emmy and the baby. The "girls," Kate and Eliza, had looked after them, while Aggie lay back in the warm lap of luxury, and rested for once in her life.