'It's all right, sir; you shall come in in a moment when the baby is washed.' 'Yes, but I want to know how my wife is.' 'She's doing very well, sir; you shall see her presently.' The door was then gently but firmly closed, and Dick was kept waiting, and almost collapsing he staggered into the room when the nurse called for him to come in. Kate lay amid the sheets pale and inert, her beautiful black hair making an ink stain on the pillows. She stretched an exhausted hand to him, and looked at him earnestly and affectionately. To both of them their lives seemed completed. 'Oh, my darling, my darling!' he murmured; and his heart melted with happiness at the faint pressure of fingers which he held within his. The nurse standing by him held something red wrapped up in flannels. He scarcely noticed it until he heard Kate say: 'It's a little girl. Kiss it, dear.' He awkwardly touched with his lips the tiny whining mass of flesh the nurse held forward, feeling, without knowing why, ashamed of himself. 'Hearing that madam was taken all unexpected, I brought these flannels with me,' said the large woman with the long-tailed cap; 'but to-morrow I can recommend you, if you like, sir, to a shop where you can get everything required.' This speech brought Dick with a cruel jerk to the brink of the atrocious situation in which he had so unexpectedly found himself. To-morrow he would have to find money, and a great deal too. How he was going to do it he did not know, but money would have to be found. 'Yes, yes, I'll see to all that to-morrow,' he said, awakening from his lethargy, like a jaded horse touched in some new place by the spur, 'but now I'm so tired I can scarcely speak.' 'That's so,' said the landlady. 'These walking tours is dreadful. He's been over from Rochdale to-day, not counting the runnin' about he did after his wife. You know they refused to take her in at number fifteen. But, sir, I don't well know how we shall manage. I don't see how I'm to offer you a bed. The best I can do for you is to make you up something on the sofa in the parlour.' 'Oh, the sofa will do very well. I think I could sleep on the tiles; so good-night, dear,' he said as he leaned over and kissed his wife; 'I'm sorry to leave you so soon.' 'It isn't a bit too soon,' said the doctor. 'She must lie still and not talk.'