“I don’t mean horridly stout, dear, just nicely and comfortably stout.”

“I’m too comfortable,” he said.  “I don’t do enough work to keep me fit.”

“Is that what’s bothering you?”

He frowned.  It was Harker’s letter that was bothering him.  He said so.

For one instant Mary looked impatient.

“I thought we’d settled that,” she said.

Rowcliffe sighed.

“What on earth makes you want to go and leave this place when you’ve spent hundreds on it?”

“I should make pots of money in Leeds.”

“But we couldn’t live there.”

“Why not?”

“It would be too awful.  My dear, if it were a big London practice I shouldn’t say no.  That might be worth while.  But whatever should we have in Leeds?”

“We haven’t much here.”

“We’ve got the county.  You might think of the children.”

“I do,” he said mournfully.  “I do.  I think of nothing else but the children—­and you.  If you wouldn’t like it there’s an end of it.”

“You might think of yourself, dear.  You really are not strong enough for it.”

He felt that he really was not.

He changed the subject.

“I saw Gwenda the other day.”

“Looking as young as ever, I suppose?”

“No.  Not quite so young.  I thought she was looking rather ill.”

He meditated.

“I wonder why she never comes.”

He really did wonder.

* * * * *

“It’s a quarter past seven, Steven.”

He rose and stretched himself.  They went together to the night nursery where the three children lay in their cots, the little red-haired girls awake and restless, and the dark-haired baby in his first sleep.  They bent over them together.  Mary’s lips touched the red hair and the dark where Steven’s lips had been.

They spent the evening sitting by the fire in Rowcliffe’s study.  The doctor dozed.  Mary, silent over her sewing, was the perfect image of tranquillity.  From time to time she looked at her husband and smiled as his chin dropped to his breast and recovered itself with a start.

At the stroke of ten she murmured, “Steven, are you ready for bed?”

He rose, stumbling for drowsiness.

As they passed into the square hall he paused and looked round him before putting out the lights.

“Yes” (he yawned).  “Ye-hes.  I think we shall do very comfortably here for the next seven years.”

He was thinking of old Hyslop.  He had given him seven years.

LXIV

The next day (it was a Friday), when Mary came home to tea after a round of ineffectual calling she was told that Miss Gwenda was in the drawing-room.

Mary inquired whether the doctor was in.

Dr. Rowcliffe was in but he was engaged in the surgery.