It was not many weeks after her sudden and unusual attack of unconsciousness that Jill presented her husband with a little son. The small stranger appeared upon the scene rather too soon, and was delicate and puny in consequence, and a great source of anxiety to its parents. Jill, herself, was very ill for a long while after its birth, so that St. John had a trying and expensive time of it, the only beneficial result being that every minor worry was forgotten in the all absorbing one of his wife's health. After the child's birth he wrote a brief note to his father acquainting him with the news. He considered it his duty to do so, though he neither expected nor hoped for any reply to the letter; and he was not disappointed; Mr St. John, Senior, might never have received it for all the sign he made, and Jill, being ill and low-spirited at the time, cried with annoyance to think that her husband should have written to him at all. "He will only imagine that you want something out of him," she exclaimed pettishly. "Never mind what he imagines," answered St. John, bending over the speaker's couch, and touching the baby's smooth cheek with his finger. "It needn't bother us so long as we are satisfied that we have done what is right. You wouldn't like to think that one day this little man might fail in his duty to _his_ father, would you?" Jill looked down at the wee, mottled face, and laughed softly, though the tears stood in her eyes still, and would not be blinked away. "How absurd it seems," she said, "to think that this will one day be a man. It's so small and frail that I'm half afraid of it, Jack. And it's dreadfully ugly too, isn't it, dear? Not even you could call it pretty." "Never mind it's looks," St. John answered reassuringly. "They're all putty-faced at first, you know. If he only grows up with but half his mother's charm and goodness he'll do all right." Jill laughed again; the extravagance of the compliment amused her. "I hope he won't grow up with his mother's temper," she said, adding with a mischievous look at St. John, "nor his father's either for that matter; I'd like him to strike out an original line there, Jack." "Too late, I'm afraid," St. John answered ruefully as the baby screwed up its face preparatory to howling. "He always yells for nothing just when we're having a quiet chat." Jill sat up a little and rocked the child gently in her arms. "He is jealous," she explained; "he takes after you in that." "I think the less _you_ say about it the better," he retorted. "I remember some rather uncomfortable half hours spent on Evie's account." She smiled, her face close pressed to the baby's, her lips caressing it's hair. "How ridiculous it all seems now!" she exclaimed--"How small! What a pair of geese we were!"