care if all the Five Towns are in darkness.
I don't care if the Mayor's aunt has got caught in a dynamo and is
suffering horrible tortures. I've come to see this bath business, and
dashed if I don't see it!'

'Well, don't stand between the bath and the fire, dearest,' said May
coldly.

Meanwhile, Emmie, having pretty nearly filled the bath with a
combination of hot and cold waters, dropped the floating thermometer
into it, and then added more waters until the thermometer indicated the
precise temperature proper for a baby's bath. But you are not to
imagine that Mrs Blackshaw trusted a thermometer--

She did not, however, thrust her bared arm into the water this time.
No! Roger, who never cried before his bath, was crying, was indubitably
crying. And he cried louder and louder.

'Stand where he can't see you, dearest. He isn't used to you at
bath-time,' said Mrs Blackshaw still coldly. 'Are you, my pet? There!
There!'

Mr Blackshaw effaced himself, feeling a fool. But Roger continued to
cry. He cried himself purple. He cried till the veins stood out on his
forehead and his mouth was like a map of Australia. He cried himself
into a monster of ugliness. Neither mother nor nurse could do anything
with him at all.

'I think you've upset him, dearest,' said Mrs Blackshaw even more
coldly. 'Hadn't you better go?'

'Well--' protested the father.

'I think you had better go,' said Mrs Blackshaw, adding no term of
endearment, and visibly controlling herself with difficulty.

And Mr Blackshaw went. He had to go. He went out into the unelectric
night. He headed for the Works, not because he cared twopence, at that
moment, about the accident at the Works, whatever it was; but simply
because the Works was the only place to go to. And even outside in the
dark street he could hear the rousing accents of his progeny.

People were talking to each other as they groped about in the road, and
either making jokes at the expense of the new Electricity Department,
or frankly cursing it with true Five Towns directness of speech. And as
Mr Blackshaw went down the hill into the town his heart was as black as
the street itself with rage and disappointment. He had made his child
cry!

Someone stopped him.

'Eh, Mester Blackshaw!' said a voice, and under the voice a hand struck
a match to light a pipe. 'What's th' maning o' this eclipse as you'm
treating us to?'

Mr Blackshaw looked right through the inquirer--a way he had when hi