In a red weeping dawn the child was born at last. His mother gave a long cry of such peculiar poignancy that her husband, drowsing in the front room, started out of his chair and knocked the French china clock to the floor. This seemed to him to be the last straw. Tears squirted into his eyes. The sleepless night, the awful anxiety of the day that had preceded it, the nightmarish dislocation of the routine, which was all that kept his irritable nerves on an even keel, were summed up in this one sharp, irremediable smash. He knelt amongst the lustrous shards and blubbered. <div>In the bedroom, Mrs Hanna, gasping and moaning, said, ‘What is it, what is it, doctor?’</div><div>‘A boy, strong as an ox,’ he replied shortly.</div>