All in ten months!

When the baby was installed in his cot for the night, she came downstairs and found Miss Insull and Samuel still working, and Larder than ever, but at addition sums now.  She sat down, leaving the door open at the foot of the stairs.  She had embroidery in hand:  a cap.  And while Miss Insull and Samuel combined pounds, shillings, and pence, whispering at great speed, she bent over the delicate, intimate, wasteful handiwork, drawing the needle with slow exactitude.  Then she would raise her head and listen.

“Excuse me,” said Miss Insull, “I think I hear baby crying.”

“And two are eight and three are eleven.  He must cry,” said Mr. Povey, rapidly, without looking up.

The baby’s parents did not make a practice of discussing their domestic existence even with Miss Insull; but Constance had to justify herself as a mother.

“I’ve made perfectly sure he’s comfortable,” said Constance.  “He’s only crying because he fancies he’s neglected.  And we think he can’t begin too early to learn.”

“How right you are!” said Miss Insull.  “Two and carry three.”

That distant, feeble, querulous, pitiful cry continued obstinately.  It continued for thirty minutes.  Constance could not proceed with her work.  The cry disintegrated her will, dissolved her hard sagacity.

Without a word she crept upstairs, having carefully deposed the cap on her rocking-chair.

Mr. Povey hesitated a moment and then bounded up after her, startling Fan.  He shut the door on Miss Insull, but Fan was too quick for him.  He saw Constance with her hand on the bedroom door.

“My dear girl,” he protested, holding himself in.  “Now what are you going to do?”

“I’m just listening,” said Constance.

“Do be reasonable and come downstairs.”

He spoke in a low voice, scarcely masking his nervous irritation, and tiptoed along the corridor towards her and up the two steps past the gas-burner.  Fan followed, wagging her tail expectant.

“Suppose he’s not well?” Constance suggested.

“Pshaw!” Mr. Povey exclaimed contemptuously.  “You remember what happened last night and what you said!”

They argued, subduing their tones to the false semblance of good-will, there in the closeness of the corridor.  Fan, deceived, ceased to wag her tail and then trotted away.  The baby’s cry, behind the door, rose to a mysterious despairing howl, which had such an effect on Constance’s heart that she could have walked through fire to reach the baby.  But Mr. Povey’s will held her.  And she rebelled, angry, hurt, resentful.  Commonsense, the ideal of mutual forbearance, had winged away from that excited pair.  It would have assuredly ended in a quarrel, with Samuel glaring at her in black fury from the other side of a bottomless chasm, had not Miss Insull most surprisingly burst up the stairs.

Mr. Povey turned to face her, swallowing his emotion.