Four days passed like this, varied by visits from the doctor and my Welsh landlady. Then my nurse began to talk of leaving me.
I did not care. In my ignorance of my condition, and the greed of my motherly love, I was not sorry she was going so soon. Indeed, I was beginning to be jealous of her, and was looking forward to having my baby all to myself.
But nurse, as I remember, was a little ashamed and tried to excuse herself.
"If I hadn't promised to nurse another lady, I wouldn't leave you, money or no money," she said. "But the girl" (meaning Emmerjane) "is always here, and if she isn't like a nurse she's 'andy."
"Yes, yes, I shall be all right," I answered.
On the fifth day my nurse left me, and shocking as that fact seems to me now, I thought little of it then.
I was entirely happy. I had nothing in the world except my baby, and my baby had nothing in the world except me. I was still in the dungeon that had seemed so dreadful to me before—the great dungeon of London to one who is poor and friendless.
But no matter! I was no longer alone, for there was one more inmate in my prison-house—my child.