"I'm quite content, thank you," he said, in as light a tone as he could manage. "What are you crying for? Nurse will look daggers at me and think I've been bullying you. Tell me--was she kind to you? I've been haunted by the idea that she was treating you badly and you were too frightened of her to let anyone know. You're such a kid, little woman, in some things--such an awful kid." "Not such a kid as you imagine," she said. "I've been thinking; I've thought of many things since Baby was born. Often when they believed I was asleep, I used to lie and think and think, till I was wretched." "What did you think of?" asked Kent indulgently. "You mustn't be vexed with me if I tell you. I've thought that, perhaps, although you don't feel it yet--though you don't suppose you ever _will_ feel it--it might have been best for you, really and seriously best, if you had married nobody, Humphrey--if you had had nothing to interfere with your work, and had lived on with Mr. Turquand just as you were. There, now you _are_ vexed! Bend down, and let me smooth it away." "What can have put such a stupid idea into your head?" said Kent, wishing pityingly that he had not felt it quite so often. "Don't be a goose, sweetheart! What nonsense! I should be lost without you." "I think I suit you better than any other woman would," she said, with pathetic confidence. "But if you had kept single? That's what I've wondered--if you wouldn't be better off without a wife at all. Oh, you should hear some of the stories Nurse has told me of places she has been in! I didn't think there could be such awfulness in the world. And in the first confinement, too! It makes one afraid that no woman can ever expect to understand any man." "Hang your nurse!" said Humphrey. "Cackling old fool! I suppose in every situation she is in she talks scandal about the last, and where there wasn't any, she makes it up. When does she go?" "She can't leave Baby until we get another, you know. At least, I hope she won't have to." "Another?" "Another nurse. Mamma is going to advertise in _The Morning Post_ for us at once. We want a thoroughly experienced woman, don't we, dear? We don't know anything about babies ourselves, and----" "Oh, rather! Poor little soul! we owe him as much as that. Life is the cost of the parents' pleasure defrayed by the child. We'll make the world as desirable to him as we can." He paused for her to comment on his impromptu definition of life, by which he was agreeably conscious he had said something brilliant; but it passed by her unheeded. He reflected that Turquand would either have approved it, or picked it to pieces, and that for it to go unnoticed was hard. She looked at him tenderly. "I knew you'd say so. It doesn't really make much difference to our expenses whether we pay twenty pounds a year or twenty-five--and to the kind of nurse we shall get it makes all the difference on earth. What shall we call him?" "Him! You're not going to get a man?"