A proud woman, Mrs. Caspar was also a very lonely one. Her genuine pride in her rather ramshackle husband--his birth, his breeding, his obvious air of a gentleman--which evinced itself in her almost passionate determination that he should dress himself "as such," prevented her from associating with her own class; and the women of her husband's class would not associate with her. Mrs. Trupp, the kindest of souls, was the solitary exception. But the two women were antipathetic. The doctor's wife, who possessed in full measure the noble toleration that marks the best of her kind, was forced to admit to her conscience, that she could not bring herself to like Mrs. Caspar. The large and beautiful nature of the former, brought to fruition in the sunshine and shelter of a cultivated home, could not understand the harsh combativeness of the daughter of the small tobacconist, who had fought from childhood for the right to live. "She's like a wolf," Mrs. Trupp told her husband. "Even with her children." "My dear," said the wise Doctor, "she's had to snap to survive. You haven't. Others have done your snapping for you." "She needn't snap and snarl at that dear, gentle husband of hers," retorted Mrs. Trupp. "If she didn't," replied her husband drily, "she'd be a widow in a week." "Anyway she might be kind to that eldest boy," continued Mrs. Trupp, who at Edward Caspar's request had stood sponsor to Ernie. "He's beautiful, and such breeding. A true Beauregard." "What d'you make of the baby?" asked her husband with sudden interest. "Why, he's like a little rat," answered Mrs. Trupp. "He's the only baby I've ever seen I didn't want to handle." "Yet there's something in him," replied the other thoughtfully. "He wouldn't have lived else. A touch of Old Man Caspar about that child somewhere. _He'll_ bite all right if he lives to be a man." And to the Doctor's shrewd and seeing eye it was clear from the start that Alfred meant to live to be a man. Somewhere in the depths of his wretched little body there glowed a spark that all the threats and frosts of a hostile Nature failed to extinguish. On that spark his mother blew with a tenacity surpassing words; Mr. Trupp blew in his wise way, working the bellows of Science with the easy skill of the master-workman; little Ernie, most loving of children, blew too. Even Edward Caspar leaned over the cot in his quilted dressing gown and said, "He's coming on." But even as he leant, the sensitive fellow knew that there was not and could never be any bond between him and his youngest born. His heart was with Ernie. And the way his mother rebuffed the elder lad, only endeared him the more to his father. The two lads grew: Ernie strong in body, loving in heart, lacking in will; Alf ardent of spirit, ruthless as a stoat upon the trail, and rickety as an old doll.