"Oh," said he, "I don't think she meant to be insolent. She's a first-class nurse. Very strict ideas about duty, but that's a fault on the right side, isn't it? Errington got her for us, and as he's attending Phyllis----" "He would still go on attending Phyllis, I suppose?" "Oh, I suppose so. Why not?" "No reason why not, of course, if you wish it. Only you can hardly blame me if I prefer not to meet either of them again. Good-bye, Edmund. I have a little shopping to do. And I hope," I burst out, breaking from him and running down the stairs, "I hope that when your children grow up, they won't cast you off in your old age as mine have done." CHAPTER X. VINDICATED. Naturally, I did not see much of the Juke household after the affair of the baby's birth. There is nothing so sad, and so disgraceful to the parties concerned, as discord in families; but this was no vulgar quarrel, although several officious busybodies regarded it as such. I merely took the very broad hint that my son-in-law and his mother had given me, to the effect that Phyllis by her marriage had passed into their possession and no more belonged to me. Moreover, one must have _some_ self-respect, as I represented to Tom, who either could not or would not recognise the facts of the case, remaining stupidly impervious to arguments that would have convinced a child; and a proper sense of dignity is an element of good breeding which I have inherited with my blood--fortunately or otherwise, as the case may be.