ot look.

The Baby's face puckered and grew red. Its body writhed and stiffened.
It broke into a cry that frightened him.

"Oh, Lord!" said Ranny, "do you think I've hurt it? Hadn't you better
take it up or something?"

But Violet did not take it up. He looked at her in astonishment. She
looked at him, and her face was sullen.

The Baby screamed high.

Ranny put his arm under the small warm thing and lifted it up out of its
cradle. He had some idea of laying it on its mother's lap.

The Baby stopped screaming.

Ranny held it, with the nape of its absurdly loose and heavy head
supported on his left wrist, and its little soft hips pressed into the
hollow of his right hand. And as he held it he was troubled with a
compassion and a tenderness unlike anything he had ever known before.
For the Baby's helplessness was unlike anything he had ever known.

And its innocence! Why, its hand, its incredibly tiny hand, had found
his breast and was moving there for all the world as if he had been its
mother. And to Ranny's amazement, with the touch, a queer little
pricking pang went through his breast, as if a thin blood vessel had
suddenly burst there.

"D'you see that, Vi? Its little hand? What a rum thing a baby is!"

But even that didn't move Violet, or turn her from her purpose, though
she smiled.

* * * * *

From that moment Ranny's paternal instinct raised its head again. It had
been crushed for the time being in his revolt against Violet's
sufferings. But now it was indescribable, the feeling he had for his
little daughter Dorothy. (Violet, since they _had_ to call the Baby
something, had called it Dorothy.) Meanwhile, he hid his feeling. He
maintained a perverse, a dubious, a critical silence while his mother
and his mother-in-law and his Aunt Randall and the nurse overflowed in
praise which, if the Baby had understood them, must have turned its
head.

Ranny was reassured when the other women were about him; because then
Violet did show signs of caring for the Baby, if only to keep them in
their places and remind them that it was her property and not theirs.
She would take it out of their arms, and smooth its hair and its
clothes, and kiss it significantly, scowling sullen-sweet, as if their
embraces had rumpled it and done it harm. For as long as the nurse was
there to look after it, the Baby's adorable person was kept in a
daintiness and sweetness so exquisite that it was no w