Probably her greatest joy at this juncture centred, not so much in the happiness she had planned for herself and Jordan, as the thought of what people would say at Dene about their flight. She felt that to be invisible among her acquaintances on the morning of her departure, would have been even a greater delight than the first day in London with her future husband. CHAPTER XI LYDIA’S DAY Lydia Trivett always remembered the seventeenth day of March as the most remarkable anniversary in her career. For upon that day she experienced such a succession of extraordinary and unexpected shocks and strains, that, looking back afterwards, she marvelled how any human mind was strong enough to endure them and not break down under such massive and accumulated provocation. Enough adventures overtook Lydia on the seventeenth of March to suffice a well balanced woman for ten years. The day was Sunday and opened without incident; but hardly had Mrs. Trivett got her brother’s children off to church, when Tom Dolbear descended from his wife with the news that he was going for the doctor and calling for the nurse. “To-day makes or mars me,” he said. “If ’tis another girl, Lydia, I don’t know how I’ll bear up against it.” “Be hopeful,” she urged. “There’s a law called the law of averages, so Mr. Knox tells me, and according to that, a boy’s very nearly certain.” But Mr. Dolbear did not understand. “Tell the man he’s a fool then,” he answered as he laced up his boots. “Children can’t be regulated by law, though it’s just like the cussed conceit of lawyers to think they can. And God help us if they could ordain these things, for they’d drive tidy hard bargains I’ll warrant.” “’Tis a law of nature, not of lawyers,” explained his sister. “I don’t know nothing about it myself, but the common sense is that after such a lot of girls, you’ve a right to expect a boy, and no doubt so it will be.” He departed and Lydia went to Mary. She was in no way concerned for her, because Mrs. Dolbear managed these matters very successfully and with the least possible trouble to herself. Nature invariably smiled upon her and her present anxiety merely echoed her husband’s. “God send it’s a man-child, or else I shan’t hear the last of it,” she murmured. All was ready to welcome the new-comer and in half an hour Mrs. Dolbear’s ally, Mrs. Damerell from the village, joined her. The children came home from church and Lydia gave them their dinner and told them that a new brother or sister was about to arrive. They shared the family ambition and prayed Aunt Lydia to let it be a brother. “I think it will be,” she said, “but that’s for God to decide.” “Nobody don’t want no more girls,” declared the eldest daughter, and her aunt told her not to speak so. “’Tisn’t what we want; ’tis what our Father in Heaven wants, Milly. And if He sends father and mother a little girl, we must welcome it just so hearty as you and your sisters were welcomed in your turn.”