It was astonishing how much heavier a month-old infant could grow during an hour’s marketing.

That reminded her that they had something else to buy, a big thing that would swallow up nearly, or quite, a week of Osborn’s pay, a perambulator.  The baby had luxuries; his toilet set from Rokeby, his christening robe from Julia, his puffed and frilly baby-basket from Grannie Amber, were dreams to delight a mother’s heart; but he had no carriage.  For a little while she might carry him when she was not too tired; and when she was, he might sleep out on the balcony that jutted from the sitting-room window, and she could stay beside him; but ultimately the question of the perambulator must arise.

As Marie walked home with her baby and her basket, she said to herself:  “I won’t ask poor Osborn now; not when he’s just paid that woman a whole six pounds; not till he’s settled the doctor; and there’ll be an extra bill for the baby’s vaccination soon, and the next furniture instalment’s due; but when all that’s cleared off, I’ll choose the right time and ask him.  I shall give him an extra nice dinner, and tell him we’ll have to buy one.”

In a week, when the doctor called to vaccinate the baby, he ordered the mother to leave off nursing it herself; he put it upon a patent food, not a cheap food; and it formed a pertinacious habit of wearing out best rubber bottle teats quicker than any baby ever known.  In the nights Marie did not now reach out in the darkness to her baby and, gathering it to herself, nourish it quietly, without the certainty of waking Osborn; but there had to be a nightlight, there had to be business with a little spirit stove and saucepan, the unlucky jingle of a spoon against the bottle, so that Osborn began to mutter drowsily:  “Hang that row!” and she longed to scream at him, “It’s your baby, isn’t it, as well as mine?”

Osborn was unused to and intolerant of domestic discomforts such as these; in the nights his nerves were frayed; at the breakfast-table he showed it:  “You look tired to death, and I’m sure I am,” he grumbled.  “If this is marriage, give me single blessedness every time.  Worry and expense!  Expense and worry!  Such is life!”

In the evenings she was very subdued; she was losing her life and light; he did not know that during the day, after such display of his irritation, she cried herself sick.  He asked her to come out to dinner one evening; he said: 

“You and I are getting two old mopes.  Look here, girlie, put on your best frock, and come and dine at Pagani’s; I can’t afford it, but we’ll do it.”

But she could not.

“Baby,” she said, hesitating.

Osborn looked at her in silence.  “Good heavens!” he exclaimed, after a while, “aren’t we ever to have our evenings out, then?  Shall you always be tied here now?”

“A baby ties one,” she replied.

“So it does, doesn’t it?” said Osborn despondently.