when Minnie was winding her clock and preparing to retire early for
the Monday washing, and the Sayre butler was announcing dinner.
Dick had come in at ten o'clock weary and triumphant, to announce
that Richard Livingstone Homer, sex male, color white, weight nine
pounds, had been safely delivered into this vale of tears.

David lay in the great walnut bed which had been his mother's, and
read his prayer book by the light of his evening lamp. He read the
Evening Prayer and the Litany, and then at last he resorted to the
thirty-nine articles, which usually had a soporific effect on him.
But it was no good.

He got up and took to pacing his room, a portly, solid old figure
in striped pajamas and the pair of knitted bedroom slippers which
were always Mrs. Morgan's Christmas offering. "To Doctor David,
with love and a merry Xmas, from Angeline Morgan."

At last he got his keys from his trousers pocket and padded softly
down the stairs and into his office, where he drew the shade and
turned on the lights. Around him was the accumulated professional
impedimenta of many years; the old-fashioned surgical chair; the
corner closet which had been designed for china, and which held his
instruments; the bookcase; his framed diplomas on the wall, their
signatures faded, their seals a little dingy; his desk, from which
Dick had removed the old ledger which had held those erratic records
from which, when he needed money, he had been wont--and reluctant
--to make out his bills.

Through an open door was Dick's office, a neat place of shining
linoleum and small glass stands, highly modern and business-like.