"From your point of view or Jake's?" questioned Saltash.
She laughed. "From mine of course. He is going to be just like Jake."
"Heavens above! I pity you!" ejaculated Saltash. "You'll never cope with two of 'em! They'll crush you flat."
She drew him from the terrace into the quiet house. "Don't be absurd,
Charlie! This boy of ours is to be the prop of our old age."
He went with her jesting, but when they entered the silent nursery in which the two youngest children lay sleeping, his trifling ceased and he trod with reverence.
They stood together in the dim light beside the baby's cot, and Saltash looked down upon the flushed baby face with a faintly rueful smile upon his own.
"There is something in being married and done for after all," he said.
Over the old baby, Betty, now two years old, he stooped and lightly touched the fair silken hair, but he did not kiss her though the child was sleeping deeply.
Later he went alone into the adjoining room where slept the two elder children, Eileen aged five, and Molly who was not yet four. Maud did not follow him, and presently he came back, treading softly, the flickering night-light throwing odd shadows on his ugly face, and they left the room together.
In the passage he turned to her abruptly. "Then I may send that child to you tomorrow?" he said.