“Forgive me, dear.  Women are cats—­I’ve often told you—­and love to scratch even those they’re fond of.  Sometimes the more they love them the harder they scratch.  But I won’t scratch you any more.  Indeed I won’t.”

The sound of the latch-key was heard in the front door.

“There’s Madame Bolivard,” she cried.  “I must see what miracle of loaves and fishes she has performed.  Do mind baby till I come back.”

She danced out of the room, and Septimus sat on a straight-backed chair beside the bassinette.  The baby—­he was a rather delicate child considerably undergrown for his age, but a placid, uncomplaining little mortal—­looked at Septimus out of his blue and white china eyes and contorted his india-rubber features into a muddle indicative of pleasure, and Septimus smiled cordially at the baby.

“William Octavius Oldrieve Dix,” he murmured—­an apostrophe which caused the future statesman a paroxysm of amusement—­“I am exceedingly glad to see you.  I hope you like London.  We’re great friends, aren’t we?  And when you grow up, we’re going to be greater.  I don’t want you to have anything to do with machinery.  It stops your heart beating and makes you cold and unsympathetic and prevents women from loving you.  You mustn’t invent things.  That’s why I am going to make you a Member of Parliament—­a Conservative member.”

William Octavius, who had been listening attentively, suddenly chuckled, as if he had seen a joke.  Septimus’s gaze conveyed sedate reproof.

“When you laugh you show such a deuce of a lot of gum—­like Wiggleswick,” said he.

The baby made no reply.  The conversation languished.  Septimus bent down to examine the tooth, and the baby clutched a tiny fistful of upstanding hair as a reaper clutches a handful of wheat.  Septimus smiled and kissed the little crinkled, bubbly lips and fell into a reverie.  William Octavius went fast asleep.

When Emmy returned she caught an appealing glance from Septimus and rescued him, a new Absalom.

“You dear thing,” she cried, “why didn’t you do it yourself?”

“I was afraid of waking him.  It’s dangerous to wake babies suddenly.  No, it isn’t babies; it’s somnambulists.  But he may be one, you see, and as he can’t walk we can’t tell.  I wonder whether I could invent an apparatus for preventing somnambulists from doing themselves damage.”

Emmy laughed.  “You can invent nothing so wonderful as Madame Bolivard,” she cried gaily.  “She is contemptuous of the dangers of English marketing.  ’The people understood me at once,’ she said.  She evidently has a poor opinion of them.”

Septimus stayed to lunch, a pleasant meal which made them bless Hegisippe Cruchot for introducing them to the aunt who could cook.  So far did their gratitude go that Septimus remarked that it would only be decent to add “Hegisippe” to the baby’s names.  But Emmy observed that he should have thought of that before; the boy had already been christened; it was too late.  They drank the Zouave’s health instead in some fearful and wonderful red wine which Madame Bolivard had procured from heaven knows what purveyor of dangerous chemicals.  They thought it excellent.