dust got the better of them. Ransome was not the sort of man who
could go about poking his nose into cupboards and places, or flourish a
feather brush with a serious intention. He was even more incapable of
badgering a beautiful girl whom he had already wronged sufficiently, who
declared herself to be sufficiently handicapped by Baby.

Since the Baby came he had abstained from comment on his wife's
shortcomings; though in the matter of meals, for instance, she had begun
to add unpunctuality to incompetence. Ransome would have considered
himself "pretty flabby" if he couldn't rough it. But he found himself
looking forward more and more to the days they spent at Wandsworth,
those rare but extensive Sundays that covered the hours of two square
meals, not counting tea-time. Then there was the hamper from
Hertfordshire. To be sure, in common decency, it could only be regarded
as a lucky windfall, but providentially the windfall was beginning to
occur at frequent intervals. The Ushers must have had an inkling.
Everybody who came to the house could perceive the awful deterioration
in the food.

The next thing Ransome noticed was a faint, a very faint, but still
perceptible deterioration in himself. And by "himself" Ranny meant in
general his physique and in particular his muscles. They were not
flabby--Heaven forbid!--but they were not the superb muscles that they
had been. All last year he had attended the Gymnasium religiously once a
week, just to keep in form. This year his wife was having a bad time,
and it wasn't fair to leave her too much by herself. Instead of going to
the Polytechnic he practised with his dumb-bells in the back bedroom.
And now and then after Violet had gone to bed he sprinted. There was no
need to worry about himself.

What Ranny worried about was the steady, slow deterioration in the Baby.

It began in the third month of its existence. Up till then the Baby
hadn't suffered. It was naturally healthy, and even Violet owned that it
was good. By which she meant that it slept a great deal. And for a whole
month after she had it to herself she had made tremendous efforts to
keep it as the nurse had kept it. She saw (for she was not
unintelligent) that trouble taken now would save endless trouble in the
long run, in dealing with its inconceivably tender person. As for its
food, Violet had been firm about the main point, but it was no strain to
order once for all from the dairy an expensive kind of milk w