第92章

As for the baby, he made no secret of his affection for the lodger, who nursed and played with him for hours at a stretch.

`I'll serve your dinner now, Alf,' said Ruth when she had finished scrubbing the floor, `but I'll wait for mine for a little while.Will may come'

`I'm in no hurry,' replied Slyme.`I'll go and have a wash; he may be here then.'

As he spoke, Slyme - who had been sitting by the fire nursing the baby -who was trying to swallow the jar of sweets - put the child back into the high chair, giving him one of the sticks of sweet out of the jar to keep him quiet; and went upstairs to his own room.He came down again in about a quarter of an hour, and Ruth proceeded to serve his dinner, for Easton was still absent.

`If I was you, I wouldn't wait for Will,' said Slyme, `he may not come for another hour or two.It's after two o'clock now, and I'm sure you must be hungry.'

`I suppose I may as well,' replied Ruth, hesitatingly.`He'll most likely get some bread and cheese at the "Cricketers", same as he did last Saturday.'

`Almost sure to,' responded Slyme.

The baby had had his face washed while Slyme was upstairs.Directly he saw his mother eating he threw away the sugar-stick and began to cry, holding out his arms to her.She had to take him on her lap whilst she ate her dinner, and feed him with pieces from her plate.

Slyme talked all the time, principally about the child.He was very fond of children, he said, and always got on well with them, but he had really never known such an intelligent child - for his age - as Freddie.His fellow-workmen would have been astonished had they been present to hear him talking about the shape of the baby's head.They would have been astonished at the amount of knowledge he appeared to possess of the science of Phrenology.Ruth, at any rate, thought he was very clever.

After a time the child began to grow fretful and refused to eat; when his mother gave him a fresh piece of sugar-stick out of the jar he threw it peevishly on the floor and began to whimper, rubbing his face against his mother's bosom and pulling at her dress with his hands.

When Slyme first came Ruth had made a practice of withdrawing from the room if he happened to be present when she wanted to nurse the child, but lately she had been less sensitive.She was sitting with her back to the window and she partly covered the baby's face with a light shawl that she wore.By the time they finished dinner the child had dozed off to sleep.Slyme got up from his chair and stood with his back to the fire, looking down at them; presently he spoke, referring, of course, to the baby:

`He's very like you, isn't he?'

`Yes,' replied Ruth.`Everyone says he takes after me.'

Slyme moved a little closer, bending down to look at the slumbering infant.

`You know, at first I thought he was a girl,' he continued after a pause.`He seems almost too pretty for a boy, doesn't he?'

Ruth smiled.`People always take him for a girl at first,' she said.

`Yesterday I took him with me to the Monopole Stores to buy some things, and the manager would hardly believe it wasn't a girl.'

The man reached out his hand and stroked the baby's face.

Although Slyme's behaviour had hitherto always been very correct, yet there was occasionally an indefinable something in his manner when they were alone that made Ruth feel conscious and embarrassed.Now, as she glanced up at him and saw the expression on his face she crimsoned with confusion and hastily lowered her eyes without replying to his last remark.He did not speak again either, and they remained for several minutes in silence, as if spellbound, Ruth oppressed with instinctive dread, and Slyme scarcely less agitated, his face flushed and his heart beating wildly.He trembled as he stood over her, hesitating and afraid.

And then the silence was suddenly broken by the creaking and clanging of the front gate, heralding the tardy coming of Easton.Slyme went out into the scullery and, taking down the blacking brushes from the shelf, began cleaning his boots.

It was plain from Easton's appearance and manner that he had been drinking, but Ruth did not reproach him in any way; on the contrary, she seemed almost feverishly anxious to attend to his comfort.

When Slyme finished cleaning his boots he went upstairs to his room, receiving a careless greeting from Easton as he passed through the kitchen.He felt nervous and apprehensive that Ruth might say something to Easton, and was not quite able to reassure himself with the reflection that, after all, there was nothing to tell.As for Ruth, she had to postpone the execution of her hastily formed resolution to tell her husband of Slyme's strange behaviour, for Easton fell asleep in his chair before he had finished his dinner, and she had some difficulty in waking him sufficiently to persuade him to go upstairs to bed, where he remained until tea-time.Probably he would not have come down even then if it had not been for the fact that he had made an appointment to meet Crass at the Cricketers.

Whilst Easton was asleep, Slyme had been downstairs in the kitchen, making a fretwork frame.He played with Freddie while Ruth prepared the tea, and he appeared to her to be so unconscious of having done anything unusual that she began to think that she must have been mistaken in imagining that he had intended anything wrong.

After tea, Slyme put on his best clothes to go to his usual `open-air'

meeting.As a rule Easton and Ruth went out marketing together every Saturday night, but this evening he could not wait for her because he had promised to meet Crass at seven o'clock; so he arranged to see her down town at eight.