To Schottman, the hospital seemed to be something of a continuous comedy, and all these mothers, many of them abandoned, caught unwillingly in the grip of natural force, were the victims of a mild practical joke. How much of this was a pose which he found useful in dealing with them, and how much of it a mask to hide a disillusioning experience nobody knew, but it never gave offence. His homely grin and bracing philosophy made him a favourite everywhere. When she held her child in her arms for the first time a momentary grief oppressed her that it should be fatherless. But the child grew far more pleasing to look at than she had hoped it would be. Its dark hair and unexpected blue eyes made it look unlike either herself or Potter at first. Then a vague resemblance asserted itself, and more strongly on the mother’s side. This seemed right to Ellen. The less her daughter resembled the father she was never to see, the better. Before long she was allowed to take it out in the perambulator Schottman had bought for her. The hospital was located in a bleak, northern section of town, a region long associated in Ellen’s mind with the foreign population, principally German, and much sniffed at by people of the West End where she had lived. She remembered how depressing that day had been when they first drove to the hospital, through wintry streets between endless rows of low-roofed, packed-in brick houses and frame cottages. They had a humbler and more domestic air than she was used to, and gave forth odors of strong cookery, stale lager and of musty parlours seldom opened to the air. But the four months of hospital life in their midst had accustomed her to these exotic touches, and when the people began to overflow into the streets at the first hint of warm weather and to take a kindly interest in her child, she felt drawn to them. It amused her to have them think, as they sometimes did, that she was the nurse or governess. It was a mistake, perhaps natural, that Dr. Schottman at least viewed with satisfaction. The little girl’s charm would serve his purpose with the Blaydons to whom he was taking them. He had never entertained any doubt that Ellen would win them in her own way. Her willingness and modesty, a form of rough good breeding, would recommend her well. But if the child should be really attractive, so much the better for everybody. “Come now,” he teased Ellen, “this little chick has a high tone about her. What you think? Better let me hunt up the young scapegrace and show him what a handsome little rascal he’s responsible for.” “How do you know he’s young?” laughed Ellen. He had never pressed the question of fatherhood, and she was not afraid that he would ever try to. “And what will you name it? For it’s mother, eh?”