nt them to the laundress, not too often. So that
Ranny, the splendid, immaculate Ranny she had fallen in love with,
appeared after his marriage a shade less immaculate, less splendid than
he had been before.

It was not, of course, that Violet couldn't wash things. For, as Ranny's
mother said to Mrs. Randall, You should see her own white blouses. There
was washing for you! Mrs. Ransome owned quite handsomely that the girl
"paid for it." By which she meant that Violet's appearance justified the
extravagant amount of time she spent on it. And it was not that
Granville demanded from her the downright hard work Mrs. Usher had
considered salutary in her case. Ransome had seen to that. He had not
agreed with Mrs. Usher. If he couldn't keep a servant, he could, and
did, engage a charwoman for all the heavy work. It was not that the
light work Violet did was unbecoming to her. On the contrary, Violet
bloomed in Granville. She had had to own that the unaccustomed exercise
was a good thing, giving a fineness and a firmness to outlines that had
been a shade too lax. It was that you can have too much of a good thing
when you have it every day; too much of light washing and light cooking,
of the lightest of light sweeping, of dusting, and the making of even
one double bed.

Ransome did his best to spare her. He thought that she was tired of
looking after Granville, when in reality she was only bored. As for her
fits of sullenness and irritation, he had been initiated into their
mystery on his wedding-day. The sullenness, the irritation had ceased so
unmysteriously that Ranny in his matrimonial wisdom was left in no doubt
as to its cause. There was even sweetness in it, for it proved that,
however tired Violet might be of things in general, she was by no means
tired of him.

Ransome himself was never tired in those days, and never, never bored.
Granville as Number Forty-seven might have palled upon him; Granville as
a personality assumed for him an everlasting charm. It was astonishing
how right Violet had been there. Granville, after all, hadn't made him
feel a silly ass. It kept him in a state of being tickled. It tickled
Wauchope and Fred Booty. They met him with "What price Granville?" They
called him by turns Baron Granville of Granville, and the Marquis or the
Duke of Granville. They "ragged" while Ranny lunged at them and said,
"Cheese it"; until one day Booty, suddenly serious, asked, why on earth,
old chappie, he had call