“I knew all the time,” she repeated. “I knew you had a child, before I knew you were married. It was at Appledore that I found the book of poems, and your little blank verse. And that was why I wasn’t quite sure you were married. Naturally she would call herself Mrs. Dawlish in the circumstances.” They were passing a park bench and she caught his arm and drew him down. “I’ll tell you all about it, shall I?” And when she added: “I was spending a holiday in Cumberland, and I suppose it was fate that led me to this very farmhouse. The old lady, Mrs. Still, who owned the place was a widow, and rather a garrulous old soul, but very kind. It was only natural she should tell me of the interesting people who had stayed with her. One of the most interesting was a pretty girl, whose baby was born in the very room I occupied. She came in February, before the season had started--there is a season in Cumberland, you know--and stayed till the beginning of April. She called herself--it doesn’t matter what she called herself--but it was not Jane Dawlish. The child was born on the seventeenth of March--St. Patrick’s Day. The old lady, who was half Irish, remembered that fact because she had sent a bunch of shamrock up to the pretty lady the morning the child was born.” “Who was with her?” asked Peter huskily. “Two women--a nurse, and somebody who was obviously Anita Bellini. No doctor was called in; apparently the other woman was a maternity nurse, and it was not necessary to call for medical assistance. My old Appledore lady never saw the baby; she wasn’t even sure when it was taken away, but she thought it was on the second day following the birth, because that was the day a man came from London. The ‘man’ was obviously Druze. She arrived just before Mrs. Still went into Carlisle to do her midweek shopping, and when she returned Druze had gone. The old lady did not know that the baby had gone, too, until the end of the week, when she asked to be allowed to see it and was told that it had been sent off to a warmer climate. The only thing she knew was that it was a boy; the nurse had told her that, and the Appledore lady was rather disappointed because, as she said, the pretty lady had been praying and hoping for a girl.