Mavis did not know if she were pleased or otherwise with the sex of her child; she could only thankfully realise that she was free from torment.  She lay back, enjoying to the full her delicious comparative ease, before lifting the bed clothes to press her lips against her baby’s head.  She held it closer to her heart as she realised that its father was the man she loved.  Although the woman who had introduced herself as the “permanent” had told Mavis not to talk, she did not set the example of silence.  While she busied herself about and in and out of the room, she talked incessantly, chiefly about herself.  For a long time, Mavis was too occupied with her own thoughts to pay any attention to what she was saying.  Before she listened to the woman’s gossip, she was more intent on taking in the details of her appearance.  Mavis could not make up her mind whether she was young, old, or middle-aged; she might so easily have been one of these.  Her face was not unpleasant, although her largish dark eyes were quite close to her snub nose, over which the eyebrows met.  Her expression was that of good-natured simplicity, while her movements and manner of speaking betrayed great self-consciousness, the result of an immense personal vanity.  She was soon to be a mother.

“It’s my eighth, and all by different fathers,” she told Mavis, who wondered at the evident pride with which the admission was made, till the woman added:  “When you have had eight, and all by different fathers, it proves how the gentlemen love you.”

Mavis, for all her exhaustion, could not help smiling at the ingenuousness of the “permanent’s” point of view.  Seeing Mavis smile, the woman laughed also, but her hilarity was inspired by self-conscious pride.

“P’raps you wonder what’s become of the little dears.  Three’s dead, two’s ‘dopted, an’ two is paid for at five bob a week by the gentlemen,” she informed Mavis.  She then asked:  “I’spose this is your first?”

Mavis nodded.

“My!  You’re a baby at it.  I ’spect I’ll have a dozen to your six.”

Presently, she spoke of Mrs Gowler.

“I’ve had every kid here, all seven of ’em, before the one I’m ‘spectin’ on Sunday.  That’s why Piggy calls me the ‘permanent.’  Do you like Piggy?”

Mavis moved her head in a way that could either be interpreted as a nod or a negative shake.

“I don’t care for her very much, though I must say that so long as you locks up yer things, and don’t take notice of what she says or does when she’s drunk, she’s always quite the lady.”

Mavis, for all her growing weariness, smiled.

“Do you know why I reely come here?” asked the “permanent.” “’Cause I love Piggy’s son, Oscar.  Oh, he is that comic!  He do make me laugh so, I never can see enough of him.  Don’t you love looking at Oscar?”

Mavis shook her head.

“Don’t you think him comic?”

“No,” whispered Mavis.