hich Ranny
paid for.

Only, whereas Nurse had made a Grand Toilette for Baby every other day,
insisting that the little frocks and vests and flannels should be put on
all clean together, Violet observed a longer and longer interval. On
Sundays, when Ranny's mother saw her, Baby was still a Little Rose, a
Honeypot, and a Fairy Flower. On other days, when tiresome people
dropped in unexpectedly, Violet hid everything under a clean overall
when she could lay her hands on one.

But from Ranny she hid nothing; and presently it came upon him with a
shock that to caress and handle Baby was not the same perfect ecstasy
that it had been. It puzzled him at first; then it enraged him; and at
last he spoke to Violet.

"Look here," he said, "if you want that child to be a Little Rose and a
Honeypot and a Fairy Flower, you'll have to keep it cleaner. That's got
to be done, d'you see, whatever's left."

Violet sulked for twenty-four hours after that outburst, but for a whole
week afterward he noticed that Baby was distinctly cleaner.

But whether it was clean or whether it was dirty, Ranny loved it, and
became more and more absorbed in it.

And with Ranny's absorption Violet's irritability returned and
increased, and sullenness set in for days at a time without
intermission.

"_This_," said Ranny, "is the _joie de veeve_."

* * * * *

Three more months passed.

For Ransome every day brought a going forth and a returning, a mixing
with the world, with men and with affairs, the affairs of Woolridge's.
His married life had done one thing for him. It taught him to
appreciate his life at Woolridge's, and to discern variety where variety
had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to
Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner
hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty
or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life and
so forth, that interested Ransome; if he hadn't, at any rate he was a
man. That is to say, he didn't sulk or nag or snap at you; or nip the
words out of your mouth and twist them; he wasn't perverse; he didn't do
things that passed your comprehension, and he let you be. For Ransome
the world of men brought respite. Even at home, in that world of women,
of one woman, when things (he meant the one woman) were too much for
him, menacing his as yet invincible hilarity, he could turn his back o