snorted.

'Oh, my God!' cried Natalya, forgetting that the circumstance was
favouring her project. 'A Jewish woman! You don't mean to say that she
drinks in public-houses?'

'You don't suppose I would let her drink here,' said Becky. 'We have
nice scenes, I can tell you. The only consolation is she's
better-tempered when she's quite drunk.'

The infant's wail rang out more clamorously.

'Hush, you little beast!' Becky ejaculated, but she moved mechanically
within, and her grandmother followed her.

All the ancient grandeur of the sitting-room seemed overclouded with
shabbiness and untidiness. To Natalya everything looked and smelt like
the things in her bag. And there in a stuffy cradle a baby wrinkled
its red face with shrieking.

Becky had bent over it, and was soothing it ere its existence
penetrated at all to the old woman's preoccupied brain. Its pipings
had been like an unheeded wail of wind round some centre of tragic
experience. Even when she realized the child's existence her brain
groped for some seconds in search of its identity.

Ah, the baby whose birth had cost that painted poppet's life! So it
still lived and howled in unwelcome reminder and perpetuation of that
brief but shameful episode. 'Grow dumb like your mother,' she murmured
resentfully. What a bequest of misery Henry Elkman had left behind
him! Ah, how right she had been to suspect him from the very first!

'But where is my little Joseph?' she said aloud.

'He's playing somewhere in the street.'

'_Ach, mein Gott!_ Playing, when he ought to be weeping like this
child of shame. Go and fetch him at once!'

'What do you want him for?'

'I am going to take you both away--out of this misery. You'd like to
come and live with me--eh, my lamb?'

'Rather--anything's better than this.'

Natalya caught her to her breast again.

'Go and fetch my Joseph! But quick, quick, before the public-house
woman comes back!'

Becky flew out, and Natalya sank into a chair, breathless with emotion
and fatigue. The baby in the cradle beside her howled more vigorously,
and automatically her foot sought the rocker, and she heard herself
singing:

'Sleep, little baby, sleep,
Thy father shall be a Rabbi;
Thy mother shall bring thee almonds;
Blessings on thy little head.'

As the howling diminished, she realized with a shock that she was
rocking this misbegotten infant--nay, singing to it a Jewish
cradle-song full of inappropriate phras