bottles."

"The what?"

"The bottles. They're nasty things, and you can't be too careful with
them."

His face was inscrutable.

"Do you think," she said, "you could find me a nice clean one somewhere?
I've got _two_ in soak."

He smiled in spite of himself at the gravity, the importance of her
air.

He went off to look all over the house for the nice clean one that Winny
was certain must be somewhere. In a basin by the open window of the
bedroom he found the two horrors that she had put there to soak.

"What's wrong with these?" said he.

For one moment it was as if Winny were indignant.

"You put your nose to them and you'll soon see what's wrong."

He did and saw. It was not for nothing that he had been born over a
chemist's shop in Wandsworth High Street. He had heard his father and
his mother (and Mercier even) comment on the sluts whose sluttishness
sent up the death rate of the infant population.

He kept his back to Winny as he stood there by the window.

"The bi--!" A bad word, a word that he would not for worlds have uttered
in a woman's presence, half formed itself on Ranny's lips. He turned.
"Well," he said, aloud, "I _am_--Let's throw the filthy things away.
They're poisonous."

"No, I'll see to it. Just bring me another."

"There isn't another."

She gazed at him with eyes where incredulity struggled with terror that
responded to his fierceness. She didn't believe, and she didn't want
Ranny to believe that Violet could be so awful.

"There _must_ be, Ranny, somewhere."

"There isn't, I tell you."

"Then run round to the chemist's and get _three_."

"All right, but it's no good. The kid's been poisoned. Goodness knows
how long it's been going on."

She looked at him, reproachfully, this time.

"No, no; it's only the hot weather come on sudden."

The Baby set up a sorrowful wail as if it knew better and protested
against Winny's softening of the facts.

"Poor lamb, she's hungry. Jest you run, there's a dear."

He ran. The chemist, a newcomer, had set up his shop very conveniently
at the corner of Acacia Avenue.

As Ransome approached, a familiar figure emerged from the shop doorway;
it stood there for a moment as if undecided, then turned and disappeared
round the corner.

It was Leonard Mercier.

"What on earth," thought Ranny, "is old Jujubes doing here?"

* * * * *

The flying wonder of it had barely flicked his brain when it was gone.