I saw baby every day.  Between six and nine every night, I broke off work to go to Ilford, saying nothing about my errand to anybody, and leaving the family of the Jew to think it was my time for recreation.

Generally I “trammed” it from Bow Church, because I was so eager to get to my journey’s end, but usually I returned on foot, for though the distance was great I thought I slept better for the walk.

What joyful evenings those were!

Perhaps I was not altogether satisfied about the Olivers, but that did not matter very much.  On closer acquaintance I found my baby’s nurse to be a “heedless” and “feckless” woman; and though I told myself that all allowances must be made for her in having a bad husband, I knew in my secret heart that I was deceiving myself, and that I ought to listen to the voices that were saying “Your child is being neglected.”

Sometimes it seemed to me that baby had not been bathed—­but that only gave me an excuse for bathing her myself.

Sometimes I thought her clothes were not as clean as they might be—­but that only gave me the joy of washing them.

Sometimes I was sure that her feeding-bottle had not been rinsed and her milk was not quite fresh—­but that only gave me the pleasure of scalding the one and boiling the other.

More than once it flashed upon me that I was paying Mrs. Oliver to do all this—­but then what a deep delight it was to be mothering my own baby!

Thus weeks and months passed—­it is only now I know how many, for in those days Time itself had nothing in it for me except my child—­and every new day brought the new joy of watching my baby’s development.

Oh, how wonderful it all was!  To see her little mind and soul coming out of the Unknown!  Out of the silence and darkness of the womb into the world of light and sound!

First her sense of sight, with her never-ending interest in her dear little toes!  Then her senses of touch and hearing, and the gift of speech, beginning with a sort of crow, and ending in the “ma-ma-ma” which the first time I heard it went prancing through and through me and was more heavenly to my ears than the music of the spheres!

What evenings of joy I had with her!

The best of them (God forgive me!) were the nights when the bricklayer had got into some trouble by “knocking people about” at the “Rising Sun” and his wife had to go off to rescue him from the police.

Then, baby being “shortened,” I would prop her up in her cot while I sang “Sally” to her; or if that did not serve, and her little lip continued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my skirts and waltzing to the tune of “Clementina” while the kettle hummed over the fire and the bricklayer’s kitchen buzzed softly like a hive of bees.

Oh dear!  Oh dear!  I may have been down in the depths, yet there is no place so dark that it may not be brightened by a sunbeam, and my sunbeam was my child.