“If I were not a farmer, I would like to be a master mason,” said Ruth Seer very firmly.
She was sitting by the roadside, watching the workmen lay the foundation for her first cottage. The process interested her enormously. The master mason at intervals paused in his work and instructed her as to its purport. She was learning the use and meaning of the square, the level, and the plumb-rule. She was also enjoying herself quite a lot.
Across her knees lay Bertram Aurelius. He guggled cheerfully in answer, and bit her forefinger vigorously with such teeth as he possessed.
Bertram Aurelius had come into the world without benefit of clergy. His father belonged to the B.E.F., his mother was a between-maid, and in the ordinary course of events he should have gone to his own place. But values had shifted considerably during the years of the Great War, and in the year of Peace both male babies, even though unauthorized, and between-maids, had come to be recognized as very distinctly valuable assets.
Gladys Bone, Bertram Aurelius’s mother, aged eighteen, was pathetically anxious to please, a trait which had probably assisted in her undoing, and took the good advice meekly, except where Bertram Aurelius was concerned. Here the good ladies, who had with great difficulty scraped together the money to start a rescue home for unmarried mothers in Fairbridge, reasoned with her in vain. She insisted on his certainly somewhat startling combination of names and persisted in calling him by both. She was perfectly unashamed of the fact that he had no authentic father.
“Ain’t he beautiful?” seemed to appear to her quite a sufficient answer to those who endeavoured to present the subject in its proper light. And, worst of all, she absolutely refused to be separated from him.
The little grey-haired, pink-cheeked spinster, who practically settled such matters, was in despair. In her inmost heart she sympathized with Gladys, Bertram Aurelius being an infant of considerable charm. At the same time she realized that it was almost impossible to find anyone mad enough to engage a housemaid, or even a between-maid, with a baby thrown in.
One day, however, when Bertram Aurelius had reached the adorable age of ten months, the unexpected happened. Little Miss Luce travelled from London in the same carriage with Ruth Seer, and getting into conversation, told her the story of Gladys and Bertram Aurelius Bone. At the moment Ruth was meditating the possibility of getting a girl to help Miss McCox without permanently destroying the peace of Thorpe Farm. Gladys Bone seemed the possibility. Never having lived, save for her brief three months’ companionship, in a well-regulated family, the accompanying baby did not strike her as an impossibility, but rather as a solution.
Then and there on arriving at Fairbridge did Miss Luce carry her off to see them both.
Bertram Aurelius had eyes the colour of a delphinium, a head of red down, and a skin like strawberries and cream. He had little hands that held you tight and pink toes which he curled and uncurled. He crowed at Ruth and promptly put her finger in his mouth.