“She's hardly so well,” said the doctor. “Better not let her nurse the child. Bring it up by hand. It will be best for both.” So it was arranged that Nancy should be made nurse and go to Elm Cottage, and that Mrs. Gorry should come in her place to Sulby. Throughout four-and-twenty hours thereafter, Kate tried her utmost to shut her heart to the child. At the end of that time, being left some minutes alone with the little one, she was heard singing to it in a sweet, low tone. Nancy paused with the long brush in her hand in the kitchen, and Granny stopped at her knitting in the bar. “That's something like, now,” said Nancy. “Poor thing, poor Kirry! What wonder if she was a bit out of her head, the bogh, and her not well since her wedding?” They crept upstairs together at the unaccustomed sounds, and found Pete, whom they had missed, outside the bedroom door, half doubled up and holding his breath to listen. “Hush!” said he, less with his tongue than with his mouth, which he pursed out to represent the sound. Then he whispered, “She's filling all the room with music. Listen! It's as good as fairy music in Glentrammon. And it's the little fairy itself that's 'ticing it out of her.” Next day Philip came, and nothing would serve for Pete but that he should go up to see the child. “It's only Phil,” he said, through the doorway, dragging Philip into Kate's room after him, for the familiarity that a great joy permits breaks down conventions. Kate did not look up, and Philip tried to escape. “He's got good news for himself, too” said Pete. “They're to be making him Dempster a month to-morrow.” Then Kate lifted her eyes to Philip's face, and all the glory of success withered under her gaze. He stumbled downstairs, and hurried away. There was the old persistent thought, “She loves me still,” but it was working now, in the presence of the child, with how great a difference! When he looked at the little, downy face, a new feeling took possession of him. Her child--hers--that might have been his also! Had his bargain been worth having? Was any promotion in the world to be set against one throb of Pete's simple joy, one gleam of the auroral radiance that lights up a poor man's home when he is first a father, one moment of divine partnership in the babe that is fresh from God?