“They were Denis’s letters. I didn’t shoot the grouse, dear darlings, nor send them.”

“What were your letters, then?”

“Well, I sent rowan berries, didn’t I?  Weren’t they red?”

“Yes.  Even Thomas read them.  We’re being rather funny, aren’t we?  Is Denis going on with Parliament again this autumn, or has he begun to get tired of it?”

“Not a bit tired of it.  He doesn’t bother about it particularly, you know; not enough to tire himself; he sort of takes it for granted, like going up to Scotland in August.”

Peter nodded.  “I know.  He would take it just like that if he was Prime Minister, or Archbishop of Canterbury.  I daresay he will be one day; isn’t it nice the way things drop into his hands without his bothering to get them.”

He didn’t see the queer, silent look Lucy turned on him as he spread his thick bread and butter with blackberry jam.

“Thomas,” she said after a moment, “has dropped into your hands, Peter.”  It was as if she was protesting against something, beating herself against some invisible, eternal barrier that divided the world into two unequal parts.

Peter said, “Rather, he has.  I do hope he’ll never drop out.  I’m getting very handy about holding him, though.  Oh, let’s take him upstairs and tub him now; do you mind?”

So they took him upstairs and tubbed him, and Lucy managed to hold him so firmly that he didn’t once swim away and get lost.

As they were drying him (Lucy dried him with a firmer and more effective hand than Peter, who always wiped him very gingerly lest he should squash) Rhoda came in.  She was strange-eyed and pale in the blurred light, and greeted Lucy in a dreamy, absent way.

“I’ve had tea out....  Oh, have you bathed baby?  How good of you.  I meant to be in earlier, but I was late....  The fog’s awful; it’s getting thicker and thicker.”

She sat down by the fire and loosened her coat, and took off her hat and rubbed the fog from her wet hair, and coughed.  Rhoda had grown prettier lately; she looked less tired and listless, and her eyes were brighter, and the fire flushed her thin cheek to rose-colour as she bent over it.

Peter took her wet things from her and took off her shoes and put slippers on her feet, and she gave him an absent smile.  Rhoda had had a dreamy way with her since Thomas’s birth; moony, as Peggy, who didn’t approve, called it.

A little later, when Thomas was clean and warm and asleep in his bed, they were told that Mrs. Urquhart’s carriage had come.

Lucy bent over Thomas and kissed him, then over Rhoda.  Rhoda whispered in her ear, without emotion, “Baby ought to have been yours, not mine,” and Lucy whispered back: 

“Oh hush, hush!”

Rhoda still held her, still whispered, “Will you love him?  Will you be good to him, always?”

And Lucy answered, opening wide eyes, “Why, of course.  No one could help it, could they?” and on that Rhoda let her go.