There was a man, too, whom she had only just time to realize was the doctor, not the undertaker, before she was aware that the final effort of her tortured body was being made without assistance from her own will or courage. She waved away the sympathizers. She was glad to see the doctor and Mrs. Nightman herding them from the room, like gaunt, black sheep; but they came back again as inquisitive animals will when, after what seemed a thousand thousand years of pain, she could hear something crying and the trickle of water and the singing of a kettle. Perhaps it was Aunt Fanny who said: "It's a dear little girl." The doctor nodded, and Mrs. Raeburn stirred, and with wide eyes gazed at her baby. "It is Jenny, after all," she murmured; then wished for the warmth of a new-born child against her breast. Chapter II: _Fairies at the Christening_ A fortnight after the birth of Jenny, her three great-aunts, black and stately as ever, paid a second visit to the mother. "And how is Florrie?" inquired Aunt Alice. "Going on fine," said Florrie. "And what is the baby to be called?" asked Aunt Fanny. "Jenny, and perhaps Pearl as well." "Jenny?" "Pearl?" "Jenny Pearl?" The three aunts disapproved the choice with combined interrogation. "We were thinking," announced Aunt Alice; "your aunts were thinking, Florrie, that since we have a good deal of room at Carminia House----" "It would be a capital plan for the baby to live with us," went on Aunt Mary. "For since our father died" (old Frederick Horner, the chemist, had been under a laudatory stone slab at Kensal Green for a quarter of a century), "there has been room and to spare at Carminia House," said Aunt Fanny. "The baby would be well brought up," Aunt Alice declared. "Very well brought up, and sent to a genteel academy for young--ladies." The break before the last word was due to Miss Horner's momentary but distinctly perceptible criticism of the unladylike bedroom, where her niece lay suckling her baby girl. "We should not want her at once, of course," Aunt Fanny explained. "We should not expect to be able to look after her properly--though I believe there are now many infant foods very highly recommended even by doctors." Perhaps it was the pride of chemical ancestry that sustained Miss Frances Horner through the indelicacy of the last announcement. But old maids' flesh was weak, and the carmine suffusing her waxen cheeks drove the eldest sister into an attempt to cover her confusion by adding that she, for one, was glad in these days of neglected duties to see a mother nursing her own child. "We feel," she went on, "that the arrival of a little girl shows very clearly that the Almighty intended us to adopt her. Had it--had she proved to be a boy, we should have made no suggestions about her, except, perhaps, that her name should be Frederick after our father, the chemist." "With possibly Philip as a second name," Miss Mary Horner put in. "Philip?" her sisters asked.