d ivory. She bloomed, like a
heavy flower, languid, sullen-sweet, heavy-scented.

It was Thursday, the twenty-fifth.

Ransome looked about him and smiled.

"I say, this is a bit of all right. Did you do it yourself, Vi?"

Her large eyes opened on him in the pale light; dark they were with a
sensuous mockery in them.

"Do I look as if I'd done it myself?" she said.

She certainly didn't.

"Did you get a woman in, then, or what?"

She hesitated a moment.

"Yes. I got a woman in."

And the miracle continued; so that Ranny said that Granville was not
such a bad little fellow, after all, if you took him the right way and
humored him.

Then he began to make discoveries.

The first was on the Sunday morning when he went to his drawer for a
pair of clean socks. He had no hope of finding so much as one whole one.
And yet, there were all his socks sorted, and folded, and laid in a row;
and every single one of them had been made whole with exquisite darning.
The same with his shirts and vests and things; and they had been in rags
when he had last looked at them. And something had been done to his
cuffs and collars, too.

Then there was the Baby. Her hair, that used to cling to her little head
in flat rings as her sleep had crushed it, was all brushed up and
fluffed into feathery ducks' tails that shone gold in gold. She came to
him lifting up her little clean pinafore and frock to show him. She knew
that she was fascinating.

"It must be Mother, bless her," he said to himself.

But it wasn't Mother; or if it was she lied about it.

Then Violet let it out.

It was on the night of Tuesday, the first of August, at bedtime. Ransome
was leaning over the cot where the Baby lay, tossed half naked between
sleep and waking, drowsy with dreams. She was adorable with her Little
Rose face half unfolded, and the Honeypot smell of her silken skin.

Violet stood beside him, looking at the two, sullenly, but with a
certain unwonted tolerance. She was strange and still, as if the unquiet
spirit that had torn her was appeased.

"I say, it's worth while keeping this kid clean, Vi. It repays you."

"It pays Winny, I suppose. Else she wouldn't do it."

"_Winny?_"

"Yes. What are you staring at? She's a pretty kid," she added, as if the
admission had been wrung from her.

"She's not been here?" said Ransome.

"Hasn't she! She was here all morning and all day yesterday, and pretty
nearly every day last week."

"But--how