And its innocence! Why, its hand, its incredibly tiny hand, had found his breast and was moving there for all the world as if he had been its mother. And to Ranny's amazement, with the touch, a queer little pricking pang went through his breast, as if a thin blood vessel had suddenly burst there.
"D'you see that, Vi? Its little hand? What a rum thing a baby is!"
But even that didn't move Violet, or turn her from her purpose, though she smiled.
From that moment Ranny's paternal instinct raised its head again. It had been crushed for the time being in his revolt against Violet's sufferings. But now it was indescribable, the feeling he had for his little daughter Dorothy. (Violet, since they had to call the Baby something, had called it Dorothy.) Meanwhile, he hid his feeling. He maintained a perverse, a dubious, a critical silence while his mother and his mother-in-law and his Aunt Randall and the nurse overflowed in praise which, if the Baby had understood them, must have turned its head.
Ranny was reassured when the other women were about him; because then Violet did show signs of caring for the Baby, if only to keep them in their places and remind them that it was her property and not theirs. She would take it out of their arms, and smooth its hair and its clothes, and kiss it significantly, scowling sullen-sweet, as if their embraces had rumpled it and done it harm. For as long as the nurse was there to look after it, the Baby's adorable person was kept in a daintiness and sweetness so exquisite that it was no wonder if Ranny's mother, in her transports, called it "Little Rose," and "Honeypot," and "Fairy Flower"; when all that Ranny said was, "It's a mercy it's got hair."
CHAPTER XVI
Just at first the miracle of the Baby drew a crowd of pilgrims from Wandsworth to Acacia Avenue. Granville had become a shrine.
People Ransome hardly knew and didn't care for, friends of his mother and of his Aunt Randall, came over of a Sunday afternoon to see the Baby. And Wauchope and Buist and Tyser of the Polytechnic came; and old Wauchope got excited and clapped Ranny on the back and said: "Go it, Granville! Steady does it. Here's to you and many more of them." And Booty brought Maudie Hollis, who was not too proud and too beautiful to go down on her knees before the Baby, while young Fred stood aloof in awe, and grew sanguine to the roots of the hair that rose, tipping his forehead like a monumental flame.