Mrs. Amber paused and thought before she said: "You ought to tell him at once, my dear. It's possible--he might be pleased." "He'll be anything but pleased. I dread telling him." "Oh, my duck!" said Mrs. Amber helplessly. Marie enumerated: "He'll hate the expense, and the worry, and my illness, and the discomforts he'll have while I'm ill. He'll hate everything." "Men do, of course, poor things," Mrs. Amber commented with sympathy. "Poor things!" Marie flared. "I'd like to--" "No, you wouldn't like to do anything unkind, love. And when you've got your dear little new baby you'll love it, and be just as pleased with it as you are with George. You will, my dear; there's no gainsaying it, because we women are made that way." "I know," said Marie very sorrowfully. Mrs. Amber regarded her knitting thoughtfully, then she dropped it to regard her daughter thoughtfully. She rose and shut the windows against the now chill night air of October, and drawing the curtains, made the room look cosy. She looked at the fire laid ready in the grate, but unlighted, and puckered her eyebrows doubtfully. "The dining-room fire isn't lighted either, is it, duck?" "No mother. When Osborn goes out in the evenings, I don't light one just for myself after these warm days." "You should, my love. Really you should make yourself more comfortable." "Now, mother, I'm sure you never lighted fires for yourself when father was out, unless it was to keep all the pipes in the place from freezing solid. I'm sure you screwed and skimped and saved and worried along, as all we other fools of women do." Mrs. Amber did not deny this, knowing it to be true; she said something remote, however, about the pleasure of women being duty, and their duty sacrifice. Marie remained limp in her chair. "The point is, mother, that I don't know how to tell Osborn." "Well, my love, let me tell him." "Oh, mother," said Marie, "would you?" "I'll tell him with pleasure. You go to bed, and I'll wait here to tell him when he comes in." "Supposing he's very late?" "He won't be later than the last Tube train. I shall get home comfortably, my love; don't you worry about me. We old women can take care of ourselves, you know. It's ten o'clock, and you go off to bed." "I don't know that I want to, mother." "Shoo!" said Mrs. Amber. When Marie was in bed, her mother went to the dining-room, established herself in an armchair, and put a match to the fire. Her husband being long dead, she regarded her own sacrificial days as over, and she remained tolerably comfortable on what he had left behind him. In the days of his life, the money had taken him away to those vague haunts of men; but now it solaced, every penny of it, his widow. As she sat by the kindled fire, Mrs. Amber resumed her knitting, and as she knitted she wondered fondly what the new baby would be like; whether it would be boy or girl, and just exactly what piece of work she had better get in hand against its arrival.