"Oh, but the bad things last so!" said Sally. "Nobody says any thing about the good things: it's always the bad ones. I don't see why people like to: if they didn't, there'd be some chance of a thing's being forgotten." "Never you mind, Sally," said Hetty, in a tone unusually caressing for her. "Never you mind, nobody talks about you now, except to say the good things; and you are always going to stay with me as long as I live, and when that baby comes we'll just wonder how we ever got along without him." "Oh, Hetty, you're just one of the Lord's angels!" cried Sally. "Humph!" said Hetty. "I hope he's got better ones. There wasn't much angel about me this morning when that mother-in-law of yours was here, I can tell you. I wonder if she'll have the heart to keep away after the baby's born." "I thought of that, too," said Sally, timidly. "If it should be a boy, I think maybe she'd be pleased. She always did worship Jim. That's the reason she hates me so," sighed Sally. It was the last of March before the longed-for baby came. Never did baby have a better welcome. It was as if three mothers had awaited his coming. Hetty's happiness was far greater than Sally's, and Nan's was hardly less. Hetty had been astonished at herself for the passionate yearning she had felt towards the little unborn creature from the beginning, and, when she took the little fellow in her arms, her first thought was, "Dear me! if mothers feel any more than I feel now, how can they bear it?" Turning to Jim, she exclaimed, "Oh, Jim! I'm sure you ought to be happy now. We'll name this little chap after you, James Little, Junior." "No!" said Jim, doggedly, "I'll not hand down that name. The sooner it is forgotten the better." All the sunshine and peace of his new home had not been enough wholly to brighten or heal Jim's wounded spirit. Hetty had found herself baffled at every turn by a sort of inertia of sadness, harder to deal with than any other form of mental depression. "You're very wrong, Jim," replied Hetty, earnestly. "The name is your own to make or to mar, and you ought to be proud to hand it down." "You can't judge about that, Hetty," said Jim. "It stands to reason that you can't have any idea about the feeling of being disgraced. I don't believe a man can ever shake it off in this world: if he can in any other, I have my doubts. I don't know what the orthodox people ever wanted to get up their theory of a hell for. A man can be a worse hell to himself, than any hell they can invent to put him into. I know that." "Jim!" exclaimed Hetty, "how dare you speak so, with this dear little innocent baby's eyes looking up at you?" "That's just the reason," answered Jim, bitterly. "If this baby hadn't come, there seemed to be some chance of our outgrowing the memory of the things we'd like to forget and have forgotten. But this just rakes it all up again as bad as ever. You'll see: you don't know people so well as Sally and I do."