A week more passed quietly enough. Lady Austell arrived, and that somehow was the last straw for Uncle Alf, for she was so extraordinarily appropriate, and he persuaded Jim to come back to Richmond with him. Lady Austell had very thoughtfully let the house at Deal most advantageously for the whole month of September, and intended to have a nice long stay at Grote. Really it was quite too wonderful that Dora’s baby should be born at Grote. It was a clear case of special Providence.
Then came a day when the house was very still, and the hot hours passed with leaden foot. To Claude it seemed that the morning would never pass to noon, and when noon was over each hour the more seemed an eternity twice told. But just before sunset there was heard the cry of a child.
Later, he was allowed to see Dora for a moment, and in a cot by her bed, tiny and red and crumpled, lay that which had come into the world.
“Oh Claude!” she said softly, as he came up to her bed, “all three of us—you and your son and I.”
THE END
GROSSET & DUNLAP’S
DRAMATIZED NOVELS