"She! There you go again."
"I'm sure it will be a 'she.'"
"Not him. You trust my judgment. It's a gift with me. All great men have it. Bonyparte and Wellington and Julius Cæsar."
"You do go it."
"That's right. Do for a motto, that would. Go it! Keep a-moving! The people in this silly old town are standin' still, up to their knees in their graves already, poor souls!"
Then he would kiss her again, and bolt off to the shop, chuckling and rubbing his hands.
Susan would return to her novel, and bury hopes and fears in the mild adventures of a conventional and highly respectable pair of lovers. She had always liked sweets, but at this period she enjoyed a surfeit of them. The sentiment that exuded from every page of her favourite romances affected her tremendously, and may have affected her unborn child.
III
Upon the eve of the child's birth, nearly a year after her marriage, Susan wrote a letter to her husband. She had spent the day pottering about her bedroom, turning over certain clothes, notably her wedding-gown, and recalling vividly the events succeeding her marriage, the journey to France, all the pleasant incidents of the honeymoon. From a small desk which had belonged to her father, a solid rosewood box clamped with brass, she took certain "treasures," a bit of heather picked by Joe when they took a jaunt together to the New Forest, a trinket or two, a lock of Joe's hair, his letters tied up in pink ribbon and her birth certificate, solemnly thrust into her hand by Mrs. Biddlecombe upon the morning ol the wedding. Inside the desk remained a few sheets of the "fancy" notepaper which she had used as a maid. She selected a new nib, placed it in an ivory penholder, and began to write:
"MY DARLING HUSBAND,