"Funny? I’m dead serious, my girl. This stream," he tapped an inflated chest, "rose higher than its source. It began not far from the gutter, Susie. I’m not ashamed of it. Nothing of the snob about Joe Quinney! I’m a bit of a river. I’m marked on the map. I flow all over the shop; yes, I do. And my son may become a sort of Amazon. Do you know how many square miles the Amazon waters?"
"Useful bit of knowledge. Nigh upon three million square miles!"
"I see Joe Quinney, junior, percolatin’ everywhere, bang from one end of the Empire to another."
"Not him. You trust my judgment. It’s a gift with me. All great men have it. Bonyparte and Wellington and Julius Cæsar."
"That’s right. Do for a motto, that would. Go it! Keep a-moving! The people in this silly old town are standin’ still, up to their knees in their graves already, poor souls!"
Then he would kiss her again, and bolt off to the shop, chuckling and rubbing his hands.
Susan would return to her novel, and bury hopes and fears in the mild adventures of a conventional and highly respectable pair of lovers. She had always liked sweets, but at this period she enjoyed a surfeit of them. The sentiment that exuded from every page of her favourite romances affected her tremendously, and may have affected her unborn child.
Upon the eve of the child’s birth, nearly a year after her marriage, Susan wrote a letter to her husband. She had spent the day pottering about her bedroom, turning over certain clothes, notably her wedding-gown, and recalling vividly the events succeeding her marriage, the journey to France, all the pleasant incidents of the honeymoon. From a small desk which had belonged to her father, a solid rosewood box clamped with brass, she took certain "treasures," a bit of heather picked by Joe when they took a jaunt together to the New Forest, a trinket or two, a lock of Joe’s hair, his letters tied up in pink ribbon and her birth certificate, solemnly thrust into her hand by Mrs. Biddlecombe upon the morning ol the wedding. Inside the desk remained a few sheets of the "fancy" notepaper which she had used as a maid. She selected a new nib, placed it in an ivory penholder, and began to write:
"I want to tell you that the last year has been the happiest of my life. I don’t believe that I can ever be quite so happy again. You have been sweet to me. When I have tried to tell you this, you have always laughed, and so I want to write it down.