three aunts from Clapton, in their bugles and cameos and glittering bonnets.

There was a man, too, whom she had only just time to realize was the doctor, not the undertaker, before she was aware that the final effort of her tortured body was being made without assistance from her own will or courage.

She waved away the sympathizers. She was glad to see the doctor and Mrs. Nightman herding them from the room, like gaunt, black sheep; but they came back again as inquisitive animals will when, after what seemed a thousand thousand years of pain, she could hear something crying and the trickle of water and the singing of a kettle.

Perhaps it was Aunt Fanny who said: "It's a dear little girl."

The doctor nodded, and Mrs. Raeburn stirred, and with wide eyes gazed at her baby.

"It is Jenny, after all," she murmured; then wished for the warmth of a new-born child against her breast.

Chapter II: Fairies at the Christening

A fortnight after the birth of Jenny, her three great-aunts, black and stately as ever, paid a second visit to the mother.

"And how is Florrie?" inquired Aunt Alice.

"Going on fine," said Florrie.

"And what is the baby to be called?" asked Aunt Fanny.

"Jenny, and perhaps Pearl as well."

"Jenny?"

"Pearl?"

"Jenny Pearl?"

The three aunts disapproved the choice with combined interrogation.

"We were thinking," announced Aunt Alice; "your aunts were thinking, Florrie, that since we have a good deal of room at Carminia House——"

"It would be a capital plan for the baby to live with us," went on Aunt Mary.

"For since our father died" (old Frederick Horner, the chemist, had been under a laudatory stone slab at Kensal Green for a quarter of a century), "there has been room and to spare at Carminia House," said Aunt Fanny.

"The baby would be well brought up," Aunt Alice declared.

"Very well brought up, and sent to a genteel academy for young—ladies." The break before the last word was due to Miss Horner's momentary but distinctly perceptible criticism of the unladylike bedroom, where her niece lay suckling her baby girl.

"We should not want her at once, of course," Aunt Fanny explained. "We should not expect to be able to look after her properly—though I believe there are now many infant foods very highly recommended even by doctors."

Perhaps it was the pride of chemical ancestry that sustained Miss Frances Horner through the indelicacy of the last announcement. But old maids' flesh was weak, and the carmine suffusing her waxen cheeks drove the eldest sister into an attempt to cover her confusion by adding that she, for one, was glad in these days of neglected duties to see a mother nursing her own child.

"We feel," she went on, "that the arrival of a little girl shows very clearly that the Almighty intended us to adopt her. Had it—had she proved to be a boy, we should have made no suggestions about her, except, perhaps, that her name should be Frederick after our father, the chemist."

"With possibly Philip as a second name," Miss Mary Horner put in.

"Philip?" her sisters asked.

And now Miss Mary blushed, whether on account of a breach of sisterly etiquette, or whether for some guilty memory of a long-withered affection, was never discovered by her elders or any one else, either.

"Philip?" her sisters repeated.

"It is a very respectable name," said Miss Mary apologetically, and for the life of her could only recall Philip of Spain, whose admirable qualities were not enough marked to justify her in breaking in upon Miss Horner's continuation of the discussion.

"Feeling as we do," the latter said, "that a divine providence has given a girl-child to the world on account of our earnest prayers, we think we have a certain right to give our advice, to urge that you, my dear Florence, should allow us the opportunity of regulating her education and securing her future. We enjoy between us a comfortable little sum of money, half of which we propose to set aside for the child. The rest has already been promised to the Reverend Williams, to be applied as he shall think fit."

"Like an ointment, I suppose," said Florrie.

"Like an ointment? Like what ointment?"

"You seem to think that money will cure everything—if it's applied. But who's going to look after Jenny if you die? Because," she went on, before they had time to answer, "Jenny isn't going to be applied to the Reverend Williams. She isn't going to mope all day with Bibles as big as tramcars on her knees. No, thank you, Aunt Alice, Jenny'll stay with her mother."

"Then you won't allow us to adopt her?" snapped Miss Horner, sitting up so straight in the cane-bottomed chair that it creaked again and again.

"I don't think," Aunt Fanny put in, "that you are quite old enough to understand the temptations of a young girl."

"Aren't I?" said Florence. "I think I know a sight more about 'em than you do, Aunt Fanny. I am a mother, when all's said and done."

"But have you got salvation?" asked Miss Horner.

"I don't see what salvation and that all's got to do with my Jenny," Mrs. Raeburn argued.

"But you would like her to be sure of everlasting happiness?" inquired Miss Fanny mildly, amazed at her niece's obstinacy.

"I'd like her to be a good girl, yes."

"But how can she be good till she has found the Lord? We're none of us good," declared Miss Mary, "till we have been washed in the blood of the Lamb."

"I quite believe you're in earnest, Aunt Alice," declared Mrs. Raeburn, "in earnest, and anxious to do well by Jenny, but I don't hold and never did hold with cooping children up. Poor little things!"

"There wouldn't be any cooping up. As a child of grace, she would often go out walking with her aunts, and sometimes, perhaps often, be allowed to carry the tracts."

Mrs. Raeburn looked down in the round blue eyes of Jenny.

"Perhaps you'd like her to jump to glory with a tambourine?" she said.

"Jump to glory with a tambourine?" echoed Miss Horner.

"Or bang the ears off of Satan with a blaring drum? Or go squalling up aloft with them saucy salvation hussies?"

The austere old ladies were deeply shocked by the levity of their niece's inquiries.

Sincerely happy, sincerely good, they were unable to understand any one not burning to feel at home in the whitewashed chapel which to them was an abode of murmurous peace. They wanted everybody to recognize with glad familiarity every text that decorated the bleak walls with an assurance of heavenly joys. Their quiet encounters with spiritual facts had nothing in common with those misguided folk who were escorted by brass bands along the shining road to God. They were happy in the exclusiveness of their religion, not from any conscious want of charity, but from the exaltation aroused by the privilege of divine intimacy and the joyful sense of being favorites in heavenly places. The Rev. Josiah Williams, for all his liver-colored complexion and clayey nose, was to them a celestial ambassador. His profuse outpourings of prayer took them higher than any skylark with its quivering wings. His turgid discourses, where every metaphor seemed to have escaped from a store's price-list, were to them more fruitful of imaginative results than any poet's song. His grave visits, when he seemed always to be either washing his hands or wiping his boots, left in the hearts of the three old maids memories more roseate than any sunset of the Apennines. Therefore, when Mrs. Raeburn demanded to know if they were anxious for Jenny to jump to glory with a tambourine, the religious economy of the three Miss Horners was upset. On consideration, even jumping to glory without a tambourine struck them as an indelicate method of reaching Paradise.

"And wherever did you get the notion of adopting Jenny?" continued the niece. "For