The Combined Maze Part 24

"How's that?" (He sat perched on the footrail of the bedstead, for there was not much room to spare, what with the wardrobe and Winny and the bath.)

"I don't know. But I fancy she isn't very well."

The Baby confirmed her judgment by a cry of anguish.

"I say, what's wrong?"

"I think," said Winny, "it's the hot weather and the 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 s.l.u.ts whose s.l.u.ttishness 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.

Ranny's thoughts were where his heart was, where he was back again in an instant, in the bedroom with Winny and the Baby.

He prepared the child's food under Winny's directions (it was wonderful how Winny seemed to know); and before nightfall, what with rocking and singing, she had soothed the Baby to sleep.

Nightfall, and Violet hadn't come back.

"I'm glad she's got out at last," Winny said. "She's had such an awful day."

"You think she doesn't get out enough, then?"

She hesitated.

"I do. Not really _out_ because of Baby."

They sat near, they spoke low, so as not to wake the child that slept on Winny's knee.

"The kid doesn't give her many awful days. It's such a jolly kid. Any one would think she'd be happy with it."

"She's so young, Ranny. You should think of that. She's only like a child herself. She's got to be looked after. She doesn't know much about babies. She hasn't had one very long, you see."

"_You_ know, Winny. How's that? You haven't had one at all."

"No. I haven't had one. I can't say how it is."

He smiled. "To look at you any one would say you'd nursed a baby all your life."

So she had--in fancy and in dreams.

"It comes more natural to some," she said. "All Violet wants is telling.