“The sooner we build our own house, the better, wouldn’t you say, old girl?”

“My very thought,” said Mary-Jim, and kissed him. She regarded the moustache-strap as no detriment. It was a conjugal rather than a romantic kiss.

Contrary to probability, during the year past they had become fond of one another. But neither was fond of the child that lay silent in the crib at the foot of the bed.

There was no use delaying the matter, and the next day Dr. J. A. Jerome was asked to take a look at the baby. Dr. Jerome investigating a case was not the jokey, chattering man he was in social meetings, and he did a number of things without speaking. Clapped his hands near the baby’s ear, passed a lighted match before its eyes, poked it here and there and even pinched it, then pinched it again, to make sure he had heard its curious cry. He measured its scalp and probed the fontanelle with a long finger.

“The Swiss man was right,” he said at last. “Now we must see what we can do.”

To the Senator, upon whom he dropped in that night for a dram, he was more communicative.

“They’ll never raise that one,” said he. “No point in sparing you, Hamish; the child’s an idjit, and the mercy is it won’t live long.”

The Cornishes lost no time in building their house on a piece of land that was visible from St. Kilda, being beyond the big house’s garden and across a road. It was not as large as the Senator’s mansion, but it was a large house all the same, and Blairlogie people joked that perhaps the Major intended to take boarders. What did two young people, with one child, want with a house the like of that? It was modern, too, in the manner that passed as modern at the time, and word got around that several of the rooms weren’t meant to have wallpaper, and were plastered in a gritty way that must be intended to take paint. There were a great many windows, too, as if it wasn’t hard enough to heat a house in that climate without having so much glass. It had steam-heating, expensive though it was, and so many bathrooms that the thing was a perfect scandal—bathrooms right off the bedrooms, and a washroom with a toilet in it on the ground floor, so that you couldn’t decently conceal where you were going when you went. Snoopers were not encouraged, though it was the local custom to visit any house during its building, just to see what was going on.

The scandal of the house, however, was minor compared to the scandal of seeing the Major and his wife walking to the Anglican church, most Sunday mornings. That was a slap in the eye for the McRorys, now wasn’t it?A mixed marriage! Just wait till the boy grows up a little. He’ll be an R.C. right enough. The Papists would never let him go.

But the boy was not seen. He was never taken out in his baby-carriage, and when Mary-Jim was asked about him directly, she said he was delicate and needed special care. Probably born with one glass eye, like his father, said the ribald. Maybe he was a cripple, said the people who failed to add that in Blairlogie there were more cripples than he. They would find out, in time.

They did not find out when the house was completed, and furnished. (Did you see the carloads of furniture coming into the station, from Ottawa and as far away as Montreal?) Mary-Jim knew what had to be done, and in due time a small notice appeared in The Clarion announcing that on a certain day in June Mrs. Francis Cornish would be At Home at Chegwidden Lodge.

This meant, according to local custom, that anyone not positively Polish was free to come, drink a cup of tea, and look around. They came in hundreds, trudged all over the house, rubbed fabrics between their fingers, covertly looked in drawers and cupboards, sucked in their lips, and murmured jealously among themselves. Didn’t it beat the band! The money that must have been poured out! Well, it was nice for them that had it. And Chegwidden Lodge—what were you to make of that? The postmaster’s wife said that her husband had half a mind to insist that letters be addressed to 17 Walter Street, which is what the vacant lot had been before this mansion was set up. Everybody agreed, out of her earshot, that the postmaster had only half a mind at the best of times, and nothing of the sort happened. The postmaster’s wife reported that letters were posted with Chegwidden Lodge plainly printed on the envelopes. Their own stationery! And Mary-Jim correcting everybody about the way to say it, and wanting them to say Cheggin, as if they couldn’t read plain English—if that word was English, mind you.

The day Mary-Jim received Blairlogie was also the last day she did anything of the sort; she had only agreed to a single occasion because of her father’s political position. There was no sign of the baby. It was usual for babies to hold court, and be exclaimed over, as the wonders they were.

The baby had a nurse, a starched, grim-faced woman from Ottawa, who made no friends. A rumour went around that when the baby cried, its cry was queer—the queerest thing you ever heard. Victoria Cameron made it her business to track down the source of this rumour, and, as she suspected, it was Dominique Tremblay, the maid at Chegwidden Lodge. Victoria descended upon Dominique and told her that if she ever dared to open her mouth about family matters again, she, Victoria Cameron, would rip the soul-case out of her. Dominique, terrified, said no more. But when she was questioned, she rolled her eyes dramatically, and laid her finger to her lips; this made rumour worse.

Rumour whispered that the ailing child was the victim of some fault in the father (you know what those old English families are) or—hush!—one of those diseases soldiers pick up from foreign harlots. That would be why Mary-Jim had no more children. Was it choice or inability? Rumour knew of women whose insides were simply a mass of corruption from diseases communicated to them by their husbands. Such speculation kept Rumour pleasantly engaged in dispute for some time.

Rumour was checked after February 1909 when Dr. Jerome told Mary-Jim that she was pregnant again. This was both good and bad news to the Cornishes. The Major was delighted that there was to be a child of his loins—a son, he was certain—and so was Mary-Jim. Although they would not have passed as a loving couple, they were congenial, and invariably as polite to one another as if they weren’t married at all, Blairlogie said. But with the caprice of domestics, the starched, grim woman from Ottawa chose this moment to leave. People who discharge employees have to give reasons; employees are under no obligation to explain why they leave. Still, the starched, grim woman volunteered the opinion that another year in Blairlogie would be the death of her, and added insultingly that she had always heard it was the Jumping-Off Place, and now she knew it. So Mary-Jim was pregnant, and had the care of the sick child, except for such help as Victoria Cameron could give her. Victoria showed every sign of becoming a family retainer and champion, although she was still not much more than thirty. Dominique Tremblay was not to be trusted, and was kept out of the nursery.

This was inconvenient, for the Senator wanted his cook in his own kitchen. The Major fussed over his wife like a bridegroom, and was angry with fate when she was tired and in low spirits. Dr. Jerome said something had to be done, and, having said it to the Cornishes and to Marie-Louise and Aunt Mary-Ben, he said it with special emphasis to the Senator, once again as they sat in the uniquely panelled library, over a dram.

“I won’t make strange on you, Hamish, it would be far better for everybody if that child had not lived. It’s a burden, and it will always be a burden, and it’ll be a burden to the new child, because a dooley elder brother is a weight to carry.”

“You said it wouldn’t live when first they brought it home.”