Cirrus@Austlit

Colloquial first-hand narrative, cheery and amusing character. Opens with 'A Prefactory Note By Mrs Glubbins. Unrevised By Her Son' in which she describes her son's offer of revising her manuscript, and her insistence he not spoil her style. Then follows 'The Story'. A midwife and nurse Mrs Glubbins loses her savings and those of her son-in-law in a bank collapse and the baby born to her daughter and son-in-law is so sickly in consequence that it dies. A mysterious well-to-do woman comes to her home to give birth and she and her husband abandon the child with Mrs Glubbins who agrees to replace what she had lost ... A chance meeting reintroduces Mrs Glubbins and the child's true mother of the 'prematrue' birth of her next child. Jealousy at the prospect of her lover's marriage to another causes the mother to goad her husband to kill him in a duel, hoping he would also kill her - but he dies making the will to disinherit her. The plot thickens even further. (PB)