daughter was born. Julia was the name Emeline had chosen for a girl, and
Julia was the name duly given her by the radiant and ecstatic George in
the very first hour of her life. Emeline had lost interest in the
name--indeed, in the child and her father as well--just then; racked,
bewildered, wholly spent, she lay back in the curly-maple bed, the first
little seed of that general resentment against life that was eventually
to envelop her, forming in her mind.

They had told her that because of this or that she would not have a
"hard time," and she had had a very hard time. They had told her that
she would forget the cruel pain the instant it was over, and she knew
she never would forget it. It made her shudder weakly to think of all
the babies in the world--of the schools packed with children--at what a
cost!

Emeline recovered quickly, and shut her resentment into her own breast.
Julie, as she was always called, was a cross baby, and nowadays the two
front rooms were usually draped with her damp undergarments, and odorous
of sour bottles and drying clothes. For the few months that Emeline
nursed the child she wandered about until late in the day in a loose
wrapper, a margin of draggled nightgown showing under it, her hair in a
tumbled knot at the back of her head. If she had to run out for a loaf
of bread or a pound of coffee, she slipped on a street skirt, and
buttoned her long coat about her; her lean young throat would show, bare
above the lapels of the coat, but even this costume was not conspicuous
in that particular neighbourhood.

By the time Julia was weaned, Emeline had formed the wrapper habit; she
had also slipped back to the old viewpoint: they were poor people, and
the poor couldn't afford to do things decently, to live comfortably.