Virginia Hutton was standing, framed in the white dimity curtains of the nursery window, tapping the floor with one foot. Her lips were set in a thin line.

She was thinking. Thought had drawn two parallel grooves between her light eyes. The grooves met and partly erased those fainter, habitual creases which ran horizontally beneath the nondescript hair drooped limply on her temples.

She stood for some time looking out over the November garden, high walled, where indefinite drops of moisture were dripping dismally from bare lilac bushes and a sycamore on to sodden flower-beds. A file of late yellow daisies was staggering along by the wall: an uneven line of heads bobbing at the end of indistinguishable stems with here and there one bending sickly towards the mud.

Virginia turned from the window and poked the fire. Then, leaning against the high fender, she examined the room critically.

‘Well arranged,’ she thought, surveying the miniature white-enamelled furniture: low table occupying the centre of the room, chair with safety-strap standing beside it, cupboard near the door, with easily reached shelves to teach habits of tidiness, and railed playing-pen in the far corner.

With the exception of her own writing-table fitted into the corner between the fireplace and the window at which she had been standing, all the furniture was white; so much more suitable she thought, for a nursery. It was a pity there was no room in the cottage for her table to stand elsewhere, but perhaps it was as well it should be here. She would be obliged to keep an eye on him all the time for the first few years. Of course, the furniture would have to be changed as he grew, she reflected, but it was better to have a real nursery atmosphere to begin with.

Here was plenty to stimulate the budding imagination. The white screen was brightly painted with fairy-tale scenes; nursery rhymes formed the subject of the deep frieze binding the white walls. Some low book-shelves between the door and fireplace, where they caught the light from the windows, were stocked with gaily backed picture books and annuals.

‘No toys,’ she mused. ‘But that will come later.’

Otherwise nothing could be better, from the blue-ribboned baby basket beside the cot to the carpet of a deeper blue, thick and soft for little knees in their first tumbles. The cot stood under the window farther from the fire, for Virginia was hygienically minded. She danced across now at the blue-ribboned coverlet and frilly white pillow. The clothes were very slightly mounded and the top of a tiny dark head just showed above the edge of the sheet. There was no movement or sound.

Sitting balanced on the high fender, her fingers tapping its brass edge, Virginia frowned a little anxiously.

‘It should do,’ she said half aloud. ‘If he doesn’t turn out well, at least it won’t be the fault of early environment.’

She sat silent for a time, contemplating the tiny dark splash in the whiteness of the cot. Then she started and looked at her watch.

‘Time for his bottle.’

She hurried out of the room.