Mrs. Amber did not deny this, knowing it to be true; she said something remote, however, about the pleasure of women being duty, and their duty sacrifice.

Marie remained limp in her chair.

“The point is, mother, that I don’t know how to tell Osborn.”

“Well, my love, let me tell him.”

“Oh, mother,” said Marie, “would you?”

“I’ll tell him with pleasure.  You go to bed, and I’ll wait here to tell him when he comes in.”

“Supposing he’s very late?”

“He won’t be later than the last Tube train.  I shall get home comfortably, my love; don’t you worry about me.  We old women can take care of ourselves, you know.  It’s ten o’clock, and you go off to bed.”

“I don’t know that I want to, mother.”

“Shoo!” said Mrs. Amber.

When Marie was in bed, her mother went to the dining-room, established herself in an armchair, and put a match to the fire.  Her husband being long dead, she regarded her own sacrificial days as over, and she remained tolerably comfortable on what he had left behind him.  In the days of his life, the money had taken him away to those vague haunts of men; but now it solaced, every penny of it, his widow.  As she sat by the kindled fire, Mrs. Amber resumed her knitting, and as she knitted she wondered fondly what the new baby would be like; whether it would be boy or girl, and just exactly what piece of work she had better get in hand against its arrival.

So Osborn Kerr, arriving home not very late—­it was only just after eleven o’clock—­found his mother-in-law seated alone upon his hearth, needles flying over one of the pale blue jerseys in which little George was to winter.

She greeted his stare of astonishment placidly, with her propitiating smile and deceitful words: 

“I thought you would be cold, Osborn, so I put a match to the fire.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Osborn, “thanks very much.  Where’s Marie?”

“She’s gone to bed.”

“Gone to bed, and left you here by yourself!” Then a thought assailed him:  “I say,” he asked himself, “is she—­is she staying behind to give me a talking-to about anything?  What’ve I done now?”

The question made him antagonistic, and he looked at her keenly.

“Are you—­are you staying the night?” he asked; “because, if so, I’ll just take my things out of the dressing-room into our room, unless you have done it?”

She lifted her hands.  “Oh, my dear boy, I shouldn’t dream of putting you so about!  It is only that I stayed to tell you a little bit of news which Marie seemed a trifle reluctant to tell you.”

She put her head on one side and looked at him smilingly.  There was no sign upon her face to tell him how anxious her heart was, nor how she had offered up a prayer as his latchkey clicked in the lock:  “Oh, Lord, don’t let him be angry; let him be very kind to Marie, for Christ’s sake!  Amen.”