"On top of me?"

"And on me?" cried Dossie. "And on Daddy and on Winky?"

"Will it make us _dead_?" said Stanley. He was thrilled at the prospect.

"No. More alive than ever. We shall come rushing out, like bunny
rabbits, into the country on the other side."

Ever so far down into the earth they went, with London, and then Camden
Town, and then Hampstead Heath--a great big high hill--right on the top
of them; and then, all of a sudden, just as Winny had said, they came
rushing out, more alive than ever, into the country, into the green
fields.

But there was something wrong with Ranny. He wasn't like himself. He
wasn't excited or amused or interested in anything. He looked as if he
were trying not to hear what Winny was saying to the children. He was
abstracted. He went like a man in a dream. He behaved almost as if he
wanted to show that he didn't really belong to them.

Of course, he did all the proper things. He carried his little son. He
lifted him and Dossie in and out of the trains as if they had been
parcels labeled "Fragile, with Care." But he did it like a porter, a
sulky porter who was tired of lifting things; and they might really have
been somebody else's glass and china for all he seemed to care.

Ranny was angry. He was angry with the little things for being there. He
was angry with himself for having brought them, and with Winny for
having made him bring them; and he was angry with himself for being
angry. But he couldn't help it. Their voices exasperated him. The
children's voices, the high, reiterated singsong, "Where we goin'?"
Winny's voice, poignantly soft, insufferably patient, answering them
with all that tender silliness, that persistent, gentle, intolerably
gentle tommy-rot.

For all the time he was saying to himself, "She doesn't care. She
doesn't care a hang. It's them she cares for. It's them she wants. It's
them she's wanted all the time. She's that sort."

And as he brooded on it, hatred of Winky, who had so fooled him, crept
into his heart.

"Oh, Daddy!" Dossie shouted, with excitement. (They had emerged into the
beautiful open space in front of Golder's Green Station.) "Daddy, we're
bunnies now! We'll be dea' little baby bunnies. You'll be Father Bunny,
and Winky'll be Mrs. Mother Bun! _Be_ a bunny, Daddy?"

Perceiving his cruel abstraction, Dossie entreated and implored. "_Be_
it!"

But Daddy refused to be a bunny or anything that was required of him. So
silent was he and