Oh, it was sickening! I hadn't patience to listen to him, with his "Mater dears" and his hypocritical pretences. I saw clearly that it had been what Harry would call a put-up thing; he had preferred old Mrs. Juke--a woman of no education, with a figure like a sack of flour tied round the middle--to me. I suppose his friends had been twitting him about the tyrannical mother-in-law, in the vulgar conventional way; or he had been afraid that I would dispute his authority and orders in the sick-room; or perhaps, to do him justice--he had thought nothing of an affair which was in his daily experience, although it was his own wife concerned. In any case, I was sure that Phyllis had not been to blame. However fond she might be of Mrs. Juke--and probably she feigned affection to some extent, for her husband's sake --it was her own mother she would long for at such a time. And her mother she should have, or I'd know the reason why. "It is not my fault that I was un-get-at-able yesterday," I said to Edmund, quietly but firmly. "At any rate I am get-at-able now. I see you are in a fidget to be after your patients--go, my dear, and tell her I will be with her in an hour or two. Oh, I daresay there _is_ no hurry--from your point of view; I am of a different opinion. I am a woman--_and_ a mother; I understand these things. You don't--and never could--not if you were fifty times a doctor." "All right," he returned cheerfully, or with assumed cheerfulness. "I am sure she will be delighted to see you. Only we shall have to keep her very quiet for the next few days--not let her talk and argue and excite herself, you know----" I laughed--I could not help it--and waved him off. I told him to get himself some beer, or whatever he fancied, and not to suppose that he could teach me mother's duties at my time of life. And in a few minutes he went flying back to town, and I sought my dear husband, where he was busy digging in the vegetable garden, and flung myself weeping into his grubby arms. Tom, too, was quite overcome. Not nearly so surprised as I expected him to be, but tremulous in his agitation, and almost speechless at first. For a tough old sailor as he is, he has the softest heart I know. "My little girl!" he murmured huskily, and cleared his throat again and again. "And it was only the other day that she was a baby herself. Makes us feel very ancient, don't it?" "_No_," I returned emphatically. "I don't feel ancient in the _very_ least. And you, my dear, are in your prime. It is simply an absurdity that we should be grandparents." "Well, it does seem rather ridiculous in your case," he rejoined--my sweet old fellow!--"with your brown hair and bright eyes and figure straight as a dart. But I----" "But you," I insisted, "are just as handsome as ever you were--worth a dozen priggish little whipper-snappers like Edmund Juke." "Oh! What has Edmund Juke been doing?"