"Because, you see, you might be going to have a baby; and if you took the thing as a shock instead of--of what it probably really is, and went and got cut up about it, you might start the little beggar with a sort of fit, and shake its little nerves up, so that it would be jumpy all its life.
"It ought," said Nicky, "to sit in its little house all quiet and comfy till it's time for it to come out."
He was struck with a sudden, poignant realization of what might be, what probably would be, what ought to be, what he had wanted more than anything, next to Veronica.
"It shall, Nicky, it shall be quiet and comfy."
"If that came off all right," he said, "it would make it up to Mother no end."
"It wouldn't make it up to me."
"You don't know what it would do," he said.
She thought: "I don't want it. I don't want anything but you."
"That's why," he went on, "I'm giving Don as the next of kin--the one they'll wire to; because it won't take him that way; it'll only make him madder to get out and do for them. I'm afraid of you or Mummy or Dad, or Michael being told first."
"It doesn't matter a bit who's told first. I shall know first," she said. "And you needn't be afraid. It won't kill either me or the baby. If a shock could kill me I should have died long ago."