f wevver,' said
the mother.

'I should think it was! There's almost a crust of ice on the water
now!' the nurse refrained from saying.

And Roger, full of regrets, was wrenched out of the bath. He had ceased
breathing hard while in the water, but he began again immediately he
emerged.

'We don't like our face wiped, do we?' said his mother on his behalf.
'We want to go back into that bath. We like it. It's more fun than
anything that happens all day long! Eh? That old dandruff's coming up
in fine style. It's a-peeling off like anything.'

And all the while she wiped him, patted eau de Cologne into him with
the flat of her hand, and rubbed zinc ointment into him, and massaged
him, and powdered him, and turned him over and over and over, till he
was thoroughly well basted and cooked. And he kept on breathing hard.

Then he sneezed, amid general horror!

'I told you so!' the nurse didn't say, and she rushed to the bed where
all the idol's beautiful, clean, aired things were lying safe from
splashings, and handed a flannel shirt, about two inches in length, to
Mrs Blackshaw. And Mrs Blackshaw rolled the left sleeve of it into a
wad and stuck it over his arm, and his poor little vaccination marks
were hidden from view till next morning. Roger protested.

'We don't like clothes, do we?' said his mother. 'We want to tumble
back into our tub. We aren't much for clothes anyway. We'se a little
Hottentot, aren't we?'

And she gradually covered him with one garment or another until there
was nothing left of him but his head and his hands and feet. And she
sat him up on her knees, so as to fasten his things behind. And then it
might have been observed that he was no longer breathing hard, but
giving vent to a sound between a laugh and a cry, while sucking his
thumb and gazing round the room.

'That's our little affected cry that we start for our milk, isn't it?'
his mother explained to him.

And he agreed that it was.

And before Emmie could fly across the room for the bottle, all ready
and waiting, his mouth, in the shape of a perfect rectangle, had
monopolized five-sixths of his face, and he was scarlet and bellowing
with impatience.

He took the bottle like a tiger his prey, and seized his mother's hand
that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into that
insatiable gulf of a stomach. But he found time to gaze about the room
too. A tear stood in each roving eye, caused by the effort of feeding.

'Yes