four o'clock
He had kept it intermittently since his marriage , rather as a journal of thought than as a journal of events , and he had to add to it to-day some criticisms of a recent book by Renan which had been simmering in his mind for a week or two . Still it contained a certain number of records of events , and , taken generally , its entries formed an epitome of everything of most import -- practical , moral , or intellectual -- which had entered into David Grieve 's life during the eight years since his marriage . For instance : -- ' _ April _ 10 , 1876 . -- Our son was born this morning between three and four o'clock , after more than three years of marriage , when both of us had begun to despair a little . Now that he is come , I am decidedly interested in him , but the paternal relation hardly begins at birth , as the mother 's does . The father , who has suffered nothing , can not shut his eyes to the physical ugliness and weakness , the clash of pain and effort , in which the future man begins ; the mother , who has suffered everything , seems by a special spell of nature to feel nothing after the birth but the mystery and wonder of the _ new creature _ , the life born from her life -- flesh of her flesh -- breath of her breath . Else why is Lucy -- who bears pain hardly , and had looked forward much less eagerly to the child , I think , than I had -- so proud and content just to lie with the hungry creature beside her ?