But that cheque from the Scottish publishers contributed to other things besides a holiday. In the November of that year our son, Philip, was born. Strange now to think that he, who was in France throughout the Great War, should have had a German for his first nurse, and that before he could speak he could hum many a Volkslied--an accomplishment which his proud nurse and mother made him show off to our musical friend, Mr. Jameson, who indeed even insisted on testing his intonation on the piano. Other distinguished folk gathered around his cradle in the big studio. I can see Ellen Terry nursing him in one of the wainscoted window-seats and so apparently carelessly in one arm while she made wide gestures with the other to emphasize some point she was discussing with my husband--that I, nervous young mother, was forced to cry out at last: “Oh, Nell! Take care of my baby.” Upon which she, in a tone of commiserating reproof, replied: “Now, Alice, do you suppose I need teaching how to hold a child?” Anyone who has seen her do it--even on the stage--knows very well that she did not. So the discussion went on and I even remember the subject: for it was just when she was weighing the offer of a fresh engagement on the stage, upon which she had only then appeared in extreme youth. Joe gave his advice emphatically, though he had never seen her act then and did not know upon what a future that door would open. The opportunity was to be the production of her old friend Charles Reade’s _Wandering Heir_. The caste was not strong, and it was not wonderful that “Nell” scored a success; but I think Joe saw more than most people in that first night at the Queen’s Theatre when he rushed out between the acts and returned with a rather damaged bouquet, the only one left in Covent Garden, which he presently threw at her feet. It was the first of many a “first night” when he watched her--critical, as it was his business to be, but sympathetic and enthusiastic always. There was no limit to his praise, for instance, of her pathetic portrayal of _Ophelia_: nor of his immediate appreciation of that moment in her otherwise tender impersonation of _Olivia_ in _The Vicar of Wakefield_ when she strikes the young Squire on discovering his treachery. But these were only two out of many thrilling “first nights” of her earlier engagements when I sat beside him, my perfect enjoyment not even hampered, as in later years at the Lyceum, by my anxiety respecting the proper finishing and donning of the dresses which I had designed for her.