nder a supreme provocation, advanced to
arm-dragging and shaking.

She found that shaking on the whole did her most good.

And then, one Sunday morning, Ransome caught her at it.

He caught her, coming up softly behind her and pinning her, so that her
fingers relaxed their hold, and he swung her from him.

"I'm not going to have that, my girl," he said.

He was deadly quiet about it; and the deadliness and quietness subdued
her. But he kept the child away from her all day till it dropped off to
sleep at bedtime.

After that he never knew another peaceful moment. All his life was
narrowed suddenly into the circle of one terror and one care. It was
like a nightmare while it lasted. And it tethered him tight. He couldn't
get off by himself now on Saturdays and Sundays, for he was afraid to
leave the child with Violet and Violet with the child. He came pounding
home from Woolridge's at a frantic pace, for he never knew now what
might be happening, what might have happened in his absence.

And so on to the last days of July.

* * * * *

In that month Granville, so long deteriorating, was at its worst. The
paper on the walls was blistering here and there like the paint; the red
and blue roses and the rosebuds wilted, with an effect of putrefaction,
and the love knots faded.

The front sitting-room, furnished so proudly and expensively, had been
long abandoned because of the attendance it exacted. In there you could
positively smell the dust. The pile of the plush held it and pierced
through it, as grass holds and pierces through the earth. Ranny had a
landed estate in his chairs and sofa. And the bright surfaces of
polished wood and looking-glass were blurred as if the breath of
dissolution had passed over them. Ranny's silver prize cups, standing in
a row on the little sideboard, were tarnished every one. Violet had no
pride in them. That sitting-room was not supposed to be sat in; yet
Ranny sat in it sometimes with Baby, as a refuge from the other.

For the other was awful. It had the look, not only of being lived in,
but of having lived; of having lived hard, brutally, squalidly, and of
being worn out. A room of which Ranny said that, go into it when you
would, it looked as if it had been up all night. A stained,
bleared-eyed, knocked-kneed sinner of a room.

And oh! the scullery, where the shining sink had grown a gray, rough
skin, a sort of fungoid coat, from the grease that c