“Keep straight as a’ arrow and you can’t lose your wye,” she said.

It was one of those beautiful mornings in late July when the air is fresh and the sun is soft, and the summer, even in London, has not yet had time to grow tired and dusty.

I felt as light as the air itself.  I had put baby’s feeding-bottle in my pocket and hung her surplus linen in a parcel about my wrist, so I had nothing to carry in my arms except baby herself, and at first I did not feel her weight.

There were not many people in the West-End streets at that early hour, yet a few were riding in the Park, and when I came to the large houses in Lancaster Gate I saw that though the sun was shining on the windows most of the blinds were down.

I must have been walking slowly, for it was half past eight when I reached the Marble Arch.  There I encountered the first cross-tide of traffic, but somebody, seeing baby, took me by the arm and led me safely over.

The great “Mediterranean of Oxford Street” was by this time running at full tide.  People were pouring out of the Tube and Underground stations and clambering on to the motor-buses.  But in the rush nobody hustled or jostled me.  A woman with a child in her arms was like a queen—­everybody made way for her.

Once or twice I stopped to look at the shops.  Some of the dressmakers’ windows were full of beautiful costumes.  I did not covet any of them.  I remembered the costly ones I had bought in Cairo and how little happiness they had brought me.  And then I felt as if the wealth of the world were in my arms.

Nevertheless the whole feminine soul in me awoke when I came upon a shop for the sale of babies’ clothes.  Already I foresaw a time when baby, dressed in pretty things like these, would be running about Lennard’s Green and plucking up the flowers in Mrs. Oliver’s garden.

The great street was very long and I thought it would never end.  But I think I must have been still fresh and happy while we passed through the foreign quarter of Soho, for I remember that, when two young Italian waiters, standing at the door of their cafe, asked each other in their own language which of us (baby or I) was “the bambino,” I turned to them and smiled.

Before I came to Chancery Lane, however, baby began to cry for her food, and I was glad to slip down a narrow alley into Lincoln’s Inn Fields and sit on a seat in the garden while I gave her the bottle.  It was then ten o’clock, the sun was high and the day was becoming hot.

The languid stillness of the garden after the noise and stir of the streets tempted me to stay longer than I had intended, and when I resumed my journey I thought the rest must have done me good, but before I reached the Holborn Viaduct fatigue was beginning to gain on me.

I saw that I must be approaching some great hospital, for hospital nurses were now passing me constantly, and one of them, who was going my way, stepped up and asked me to allow her to carry baby.  She looked so sweet and motherly that I let her do so, and as we walked along we talked.