Osborn’s lunches, during that month, grew lighter and lighter; they almost ceased.

Mrs. Ambler proved expensive in the kitchen, breaking for the while through her economical rule, feeling nothing too good for her poor child.  She used to remind Osborn every time they met, by word, or look, or expressive sigh, how Marie had suffered.  He felt oppressed, overridden and tired; but he was very obedient beneath the rule of the women.

He had to wait upon himself a good deal; sometimes he brought a chop for dinner home in his pocket and grilled it himself.

He slept in the room relegated to him as dressing-room or to a chance visitor, as occasion might arise; it looked forlorn and dusty, and the toilet covers wanted changing.

He longed to have Marie about again, blithe and pretty; and to be rid of this pack.  He thought of his mother-in-law and the nurse as a pack.

Several times he succumbed to dining with Rokeby at his club, but he always hurried home in time to say good night to Marie before she fell asleep.

When the baby was nearly three weeks old, he was called upon to lift his wife out of bed for the first time, and to put her in an armchair, which had been prepared with pillows and a rug, by the purring gas-fire.  She was so eager to be moved, and he so eager to have her to himself for just a little, that he begged permission to take her into another room for awhile, but the nurse would have none of it, and she was right, for Marie was white and tired when she had sat in the chair for only ten minutes.  That staggered Osborn afresh.  He was speechlessly sorry for her, and sat by her holding her hand, watching her concernedly, until she asked to be put back into bed again.  That was on a Sunday.

The Sunday marked his memory.  It disappointed him so bitterly to find that Marie was not stronger.  After all the chickens and grapes, and doctors’ and nurses’ fees, she was not strong; and what could he do more for her?  He was not a rich man.  After the drain of all this they must live more steadily even than before; he could not waft her and the baby away to some warm south-coast resort to finish her convalescence; he could not take her for long motoring week-ends.

In a week the nurse would go.  Would Marie be ready for her to go?  If not, could Osborn keep her longer?

He knew he could not.  There was only a sum of twelve or thirteen pounds left from the twenty which had represented the nest-egg which he had when he married; five of those pounds the doctor would take; six of them the nurse would take.  He tried to arrange the disposal of his salary afresh, and could do no more than cut down his weekly expenditure of ten shillings to five.

But Marie and the baby were worth it all—­if only he could get them alone again.

A week after that the nurse left and Osborn came back to Marie’s room.