At the end of a long and possibly somewhat dull winter his wife began to hint the advantageousness of transferring themselves to that other part of town. Raymond was not precisely in the position where he cared to pay high rent for a small house, while a big house was standing empty and unrealizable. Pouts; frowns.... But nature came to his aid. With a new young life soon to appear above the horizon, now was no time to shift. His son should be born in the house in which he ought to be born. A reasonable view, on the whole; and it prevailed. Raymond had said "son," and son it was. The baby was not named Raymond: his father, however much of an egoist, was not willing to put himself forward as such so obviously, nor for a period that promised to be indefinitely long. Nor was the baby called Bartholomew, after his maternal grandfather in the East: for who cared to inflict such an old-fashioned, four-syllable name on such a small morsel of flesh? He entered the battle under the neutral and not over-colorful pennon of Albert: his mother could thus call him "Bertie," and think, not too remotely, of her parent on the stock exchange. Raymond was not long in discovering, after reaching home, what sacrifices the new life was to involve. On the Continent, in the midst of change and stir, these had not foretold themselves. Back in his own house, his interests--"intellectual interests" he called them--began to assert themselves in the old way. But he was no longer free to range the fields of the mind and take shots at the arts as they rose. Least of all was he to read in the evening. That was to neglect, to affront. However, the arrival of little Albert--poor tad!--changed the current of his wife's own interests and helped to place one more rather vital matter in abeyance. He was to live--for a while, anyway--in his present home; and he was to pursue--for a while, anyway--some of the accustomed interests of his bachelor days. He expected that, before long, his wife would accept his environment and the practices he had always followed within it. She needed enlightenment on many points. He had already communicated some of his views on dress, for example; and he had readjusted her notions on the preparation of salads. He gave her, pretty constantly, corrective glances through, or over, his eyeglasses,--for his sight had begun to weaken early, as his father had foreseen,--and he meant that such glances should count. She required to be edited; well, the new manuscript was worth his pains, and would be highly creditable in its revised version. VI