“What’s the matter with you?” he said.

“Nothing.  Do I—­do I look funny?” She put her hand to her hair, a trick of Mrs. Nevill Tyson’s when she was under criticism.  She had been such an untidy little girl.

“Oh, damned funny.  Look here.  You’ve had about enough of that.  You must stop it.”

“What!  Why?”

“Because it takes up your time, wastes your strength, ruins your figure—­it has ruined your complexion—­and it—­it makes you a public nuisance.”

“I can’t help it.”

She got up and stood by the window with her back to Tyson.  She still held the child to her breast, but she was not looking at him; she was looking away through the window, rocking her body slightly backwards and forwards, either to soothe the child or to vent her own impatience.

Tyson’s angry voice followed her.  “Of course you can help it.  Other women can.  You must wean the animal.”

She turned.  “Oh, Nevill, look at him—­”

“I don’t want to look at him.”

“But—­he’s so ti-i-ny.  Whatever will he do?”

“Do?  He’ll do as other women’s children do.”

“He won’t.  He’ll die.”

“Not he.  Catch him dying.  He’ll only howl more infernally than he’s howled before.  That’s all he’ll do.  Do him good too—­teach him that he can’t get everything he wants in this vile world.  But whatever he does I’m not going to have you sacrificed to him.”

“I’m not sacrificed.  I don’t mind it.”

“Well, then, I mind it.  That’s enough.  I hate the little beast coming into my room at night.”

“He needn’t come.  I can go to him.”

“All right.  If you want to make an invalid scarecrow of yourself before your time, it’s not my business.  Only don’t come to me for sympathy, that’s all.”

With one of her passionate movements, she snatched the child from her breast, carried him upstairs screaming and laid him on her bed.  When the nurse came she found him writhing and wailing, and his mother on her knees beside the bed, her face hidden in the counterpane.

“Take him away,” sobbed Mrs. Nevill Tyson.

“Ma’am?” said the nurse.

“Take him away, I tell you.  I won’t—­I can’t nurse him.  It—­it makes me ill.”

And forthwith she went off into a fit of hysterics.

It was at this crisis of the baby’s fate that Miss Batchelor, of all people, took it into her head to call.  After all, Tyson was Nevill Tyson, Esquire, of Thorneytoft, and his wife had been somewhere very near death’s door.  People who would have died rather than call for any other reason, called “to inquire.”  As did Miss Batchelor, saying to herself that nothing should induce her to go in.

Now as she was inquiring in her very softest voice, who should come up to the doorstep but Tyson.  He smiled as he greeted her.  He was polite; he was charming; for as a matter of fact he had been rather hard-driven of late, and a little kindness touched him, especially when it came from an unexpected quarter.