With what relief he hailed the return of the nurse? It was so late that she was stern and cross and cold with him as she shut him out. Little George awoke at the sounds, cautious though they were, of his father's undressing, and, crying for mummie, could not be consoled until lifted out, and wildly and clumsily petted and lied to, and cajoled. Even then he did not trust this daddy who was such a stranger in the house; who was only jolly by fits and starts when they all woke up in the pink room in the mornings; who hid behind a paper at breakfast, and who, going away in a hurry directly afterwards, only returned after George was asleep, or simulating sleep under threat of a slapping. The baby missed his mother's loving arms and cried miserably, hunched uncomfortably in Osborn's. But at last he must sleep through sheer drowsiness, and they both went to bed. In the morning Osborn dressed him before he went away, and was called upon to make himself generally useful, and made to memorise a string of errands. The nurse would have no nonsense. She demanded and he complied. He cursed her within himself. What a pack! During those days once more Desmond was good to him, sheltering him at his club, inviting him to play golf, or to run out into the country with him in his two-seater. Once they took George because the nurse was so firmly decided that they should do so, and they stayed out past his bedtime, and tired him out, and made him furious. "It's a gay life!" said Osborn to Rokeby, "a gay life, what?" Marie sent the nurse away at the end of three weeks, and tackled her increased household alone. She was unable to nurse the baby, and the doctor ordered it to be fed upon the patent food which George used to have, so she was obliged to ask Osborn to increase the housekeeping allowance. They discussed long and seriously the ways and means to the increase and the amount of it. "Half a crown," was her reiteration; "on half a crown I'd do it somehow." And he asked: "Yes! But where's the half-crown to come from?" "You must find it," she said at last. With compressed lips and lowering brow the young man thought it out. "I give you all I can--" "And I take as little as I can." "I'm sick of these discussions about money." "So'm I." "It seems as if we were sick of the whole thing, doesn't it?" Being a woman, she dared not confirm verbally those reckless words; their very recklessness caused her to fear. If they _were_ sick of the whole thing--well, what about it? What were they to do? They were in it, weren't they, up to their necks? Of two people who mutually recognised the plight, only one must foam and rage and stutter out unpalatable truths about it; it was for the other to pour on the oil, to deceive and pretend and propitiate and cajole, to try to keep things running and the creaking machinery at work. Because--what else remained to do?