Sophy--the happy, grateful Sophy--watched over by loving eyes, and surrounded by all the comforts and luxuries that wealth could procure, was “going on,” as the hall-porter was now officially instructed to say, “as well as could possibly be expected.” Old Duberly, whose heart, in spite of the strength of his prejudices, had in it some very soft and tender spots, had as yet only partially recovered from the state of almost frantic ecstasy into which the birth of his grandson and the certainty of his daughter’s safety had thrown him. It is true that he no longer insisted upon shaking hands (each time that he encountered them on the stairs or in the passages) with Arthur, the doctor, or maybe the nurse--anyone and everyone, in short, who could by any possibility sympathise with his grandpaternal joy. He was less demonstrative, and more quietly thankful to the God of all mercies for the great blessing that He had bestowed upon him; but for all that he was more outwardly composed; the old man’s inward condition--whether sleeping or waking, alone or in company with his fellow-rejoicer by Sophy’s bedside--was one of exceeding gratitude and bliss. “I am thinking of going out for an hour, sir,” Arthur said, suppressing with some difficulty one of the troublesome and desperate yawns which a lengthened dialogue with his respected father-in-law was apt to induce. “Sophy is asleep, the nurse says, and I want to stretch my legs and have a smoke.” Mr. Duberly, who as a rule was rather an enemy to the favourite vice of the day, and who had sometimes felt a little jealous when he had seen his “girl’s” white fingers busy in Arthur’s tobacco-jar, and pressing down with her dainty thumb the _weed_ into her husband’s meerschaum, was at that especial moment in too good a humour not only with Arthur, but with the world in general, for any idea of opposition to enter his brain. “Want a smoke, do you, eh?” he said good-humouredly. “I don’t know what you young fellows are made of to stand drawing so much poison into your lungs. And what you’ll all be like when you come to be my age is more than I can guess. But get along with you, boy--only don’t be long, for Sophy may wake up and want to say ‘good-night.’ _I_ shall be in the _boudore_ though, ready, if anything’s wanted.” And so saying, the doating old man, gathering up his spectacles, and the newspaper which he was in the habit of digesting with his dinner, a meal which at that moment sat--if the truth must be told--rather heavily on his stomach, toddled out of the room, to pass a dozy hour or two within hearing of his daughter’s gentle voice.