a brute."

"I don't think anything of the sort, Ranny. You know I don't."

She rose with the sleeping child in her arms and carried it to its cot.
He followed her and turned back the blanket for her as she laid Baby
down. But it was Winny and not Baby that he looked at.

And he thought, "Little Winky's grown up."

To be sure, her hair was done differently. He missed the door-knocker
plat.

But that was not what he meant. He had only thought of it after she had
left him.

* * * * *

It was past ten before Violet came back. He found her in the
sitting-room, standing in the light of the gas flame she had just lit.
Her eyes shone; her face was flushed. She panted a little as if (so he
thought) she had hurried, being late.

"Well," he said to her, "have you had your little run?"

She stared and flung three words at him.

"I wanted it!"

And still she stared.

"Vi--" he began.

"Well--what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing's the matter with _me_. But I'm afraid Baby's going to be ill."

She stood before him, her breast heaving. She drew her breath in and let
it out again in a snort of exasperation.

"What makes you think so?"

"Something Winny said."

"What does she know about it?"

He wanted to say "A jolly sight more than you do," but he stopped
himself in time.

He began to talk gently to her.

And Violet was horribly upset.

Wrap it up as tenderly as he might, there was no mistaking the awfulness
of the charge he brought against her. He had as good as taxed her with
neglecting Baby. She had recourse to subterfuge; she sheltered herself
behind lies, laid on one on the top of the other, little silly
transparent lies, but such a thundering lot of them that Ranny could say
of each that it was jolly thin and of the whole that it was a bit too
thick.

That brought her round, and he wondered whether gentleness was the best
method for Violet after all. He was disgusted, for he hated subterfuge.

And she might just as well have owned up at once; for in a day or two
she was defenseless. The Baby was ill; and the illness was accusation
and evidence and proof positive and punishment all rolled into one;
Baby's sufferings being due to the cause that Ransome had assigned. It
had been poisoned, suddenly, from milk gone sour in the abominable
bottles, and slowly, subtly poisoned from the still more abominable
state of its Baby's Comforter. Ransome and his wife sat up three