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“‘Tain’t a hit, it’s an ‘e. Course he do.”

“Then he should not. His wife has the first claim on him.”

“Ain’t you green! It’s his missis as wants him to go. Do you think she could sleep till she knowed how the kid was?”

“But he does not go into the house at West Kensington?”

“Is he soft? Course he don’t go in, fear of taking the infection to the kid. They just holds the kid up at the window to him, so as he can have a good look. Then he comes home and tells his missis. He sits foot of the bed and tells.”

“And that takes place every night? He can’t have much to tell.”

“He has just.”

“He can only say whether the child is well or ill.”

“My! He tells what a difference there is in the kid since he seed him last.”

“There can be no difference!”

“Go ‘long! Ain’t a kid always growing? Haven’t Mr. Hicking to tell how the hair is getting darker, and heaps of things beside?”

“Such as what?”

“Like whether he larfed, and if he has her nose, and how as he knowed him. He tells her them things more ‘n once.”

“And all this time he is sitting at the foot of the bed?”

“‘Cept when he holds her hand.”

“But when does he get to bed himself?”

“He don’t get much. He tells her as he has a sleep at the club.”

“He cannot say that.”

“Hain’t I heard him? But he do go to his bed a bit, and then they both lies quiet, her pretending she is sleeping so as he can sleep, and him ‘feard to sleep case he shouldn’t wake up to give her the bottle stuff.”

“What does the doctor say about her?”

“He’s a good one, the doctor. Sometimes he says she would get better if she could see the kid through the window.”

“Nonsense!”

“And if she was took to the country.”

“Then why does not William take her?”

“My! you are green! And if she drank port wines.”

“Doesn’t she?”

“No; but William, he tells her about the gentlemen drinking them.”

On the tenth day after my conversation with this unattractive child I was in my brougham, with the windows up, and I sat back, a paper before my face lest any one should look in. Naturally, I was afraid of being seen in company of William’s wife and Jenny, for men about town are uncharitable, and, despite the explanation I had ready, might have charged me with pitying William. As a matter of fact, William was sending his wife into Surrey to stay with an old nurse of mine, and I was driving her down because my horses needed an outing. Besides, I was going that way at any rate.

I had arranged that the girl Jenny, who was wearing an outrageous bonnet, should accompany us, because, knowing the greed of her class, I feared she might blackmail me at the club.

William joined us in the suburbs, bringing the baby with him, as I had foreseen they would all be occupied with it, and to save me the trouble of conversing with them. Mrs. Hicking I found too pale and fragile for a workingman’s wife, and I formed a mean opinion of her intelligence from her pride in the baby, which was a very ordinary one. She created quite a vulgar scene when it was brought to her, though she had given me her word not to do so, what irritated me even more than her tears being her ill-bred apology that she “had been ‘feared baby wouldn’t know her again.” I would have told her they didn’t know any one for years had I not been afraid of the girl Jenny, who dandled the infant on her knees and talked to it as if it understood. She kept me on tenter-hooks by asking it offensive questions, such as, “‘Oo know who give me that bonnet?” and answering them herself, “It was the pretty gentleman there;” and several times I had to affect sleep because she announced, “Kiddy wants to kiss the pretty gentleman.”