"Oh, Louis, do be quiet!" she said, "all I need at this moment is a good sleep."
He lay down again for ten minutes. Once more he started up, dragging the blanket right away from her.
"How can you expect me to sleep? Marcella, what right had I to make you have a child? We've no money."
"They don't cost anything," she said wide-awake now.
He made a gesture of impatience.
"We've no home—you've no attention."
She sighed.
"Listen to me, Louis, and then, my dear, for ever hold your peace. If the Lord, or whoever it is that's responsible for babies, had meant them to make women invalids, they'd never have been invented at all. Because there's no real room in the world for invalids. They'd have been grown on bushes, or produced by budding, wouldn't they? So just you forget it! The baby is my affair. It's nothing to do with you, and I positively refuse to be fussed over. I call it indecent to talk about ill-health. It's the one thing in life I'd put covers on and hide up. You must just think you've been to a factory and ordered a baby, and they said, 'Yes, sir—ready in six months from now, sir.' And then you walk away and call again in six months!"
"Oh Lord!" he groaned, "why did I marry a kid?"
"You can talk about him as much as you like," she went on calmly, "the finished article. But I simply won't have you fussing about the details of his manufacture, and all his trimmings. And that's final."