2
He had walked in one evening and found her in Charles's bedroom, bathing him. Clare was there too, helping.
'Why do girls like washing babies?' Gideon speculated aloud. 'They nearly all do, don't they?'
'Well, I should just hope so,' Clare said. She was kneeling by the tin bath with her sleeves rolled up, holding a warmed towel. Her face was flushed from the fire, and her hair was loosened where Charles had caught his toe in it. She looked pretty and maternal, and looked up at Gideon with the kind of conventional, good-humoured scorn that girls and women put on when men talk of babies. They do it (one believes) partly because they feel it is a subject they know about, and partly to pander to men's desire that they should do it. It is part of the pretty play between the sexes. Jane never did it; she wasn't feminine enough. And Gideon did not want her to do it; he thought it silly.
'Why do you hope so?' asked Gideon. 'And why do girls like it?'
The first question was to Clare, the second to Jane, because he knew that
Clare would not be able to answer it.
'The mites!' said Clare. 'Who wouldn't like it?'
Gideon sighed a little, Clare tried him. She had an amorphous mind. But Jane threw up at him, as she enveloped Charles in the towel, 'I'll try and think it out some time, Arthur. I haven't time now…. There's a reason all right…. The powder, Clare.'
Gideon watched the absurd drying and powdering process with gravity and interest, as if trying to discover its charm.
'Even Katherine enjoys it,' he said, still pondering. It was true. Katherine, who liked experimenting with chemicals, liked also washing babies. Possibly Katherine knew why, in both cases.