Mr. Higgins gave a sigh of relief. “That’s a good thing. That’s a very good thing. You see, I’m nairvous, doctor. I lost my fairst over it, and I don’t want to lose this one. Very young she is.” “Is this her first?” “Yes, doctor.” Another bit of bad luck! Through a maze of gritty streets they hurried, reaching, at last, a house beside a corner “public” which a cluster of women, gossiping in their aprons on the doorstep, proclaimed as the site of this momentous birth. One of them snatched the black bag from Mr. Higgins. “You get away, ’Iggins, and ’ave a pint of beer quiet like. This baint no place for an ’usband. This way, doctor. Here she is, poor lamb.” She pushed her way up the stairs, breathing heavily. Her bunchy skirts filled the staircase, which was no wider than a loft-ladder and very dark. “’Ere ’e is,” she cried triumphantly, as she pushed open a matchboard door. “’Ere ’e is. ’Ere’s the doctor. Now you won’t be long, my lover. ’E’ll ’elp you. You’ll ’elp ’er, won’t you, doctor?” She deposited the talismanic bag triumphantly on the foot of the bed; then she winked at Edwin: “I’ll go and keep ’Iggins out of the way,” she said. “I’m that glad you’ve come, doctor,” said the nurse. She was a little shrivelled woman, with a nervous smile and her hair packed into a black net with a wide mesh that made her whole bead sombre and forbidding. Her lips twitched when she smiled, and Edwin, who had been counting on the moral support of her experience, saw at once that she was even more anxious than himself. He was soon to know that the women who acted as professional midwives in the North Bromwich slums were usually widows left without means, who adopted this profession with no other qualification than a certain wealth of subjective experience, on which they were careful to insist. The claim “I’ve had eight of them myself, so _I_ ought to know,” did not atone for the fact that they didn’t actually know anything at all. Mrs. Brown, the lady to whose mercies the trustful Mr. Higgins had committed his second, was a timid specimen of the class. Beneath her protestations of experience her soul quaked with terror, and a hazy conviction that if anything went wrong, she, the unregistered, would probably be committed for manslaughter, reduced her to a state of dazed incompetence in which she heard without hearing Edwin’s none too confident directions. She went downstairs tremulously to bring hot water, and Edwin was left alone with his patient. “It won’t be long, doctor, will it?” she said.