After the dust-cloak had settled with the driver, it advanced self-consciously to the steps leading to the front door, the while it called to the London slut: 

“Come along, nurse, and be careful of baby.”

Mavis, who saw and heard this from the window of her sitting-room, noticed that Mrs Perkins greeted her mother, who was waiting at the door, with some condescension.  When the last flimsy parcel had been taken within, Mrs Budd brought in Mrs Perkins and the baby to introduce them to Mavis.  Mrs Perkins sat down and assumed a manner of superfine gentility, while she talked with a Cockney accent.  Her mother remained standing.  The dust-cloak lived in Kensington, it informed Mavis, “which was so convenient for the West End:  it was only an hour’s ’bus ride from town.”

“Less than that,” said Mavis to the dust-cloak.

“I have known it to take fifty-five minutes when it hasn’t been stopped by funerals,” declared Mrs Perkins.

Mavis looked at the dust-cloak in surprise.

“I always thought it took a quarter of an hour at the outside,” remarked Mavis.

“For my part, when I go to London, I’m afraid of the ’buses,” said Mrs Budd.  “I always take the train to Willesden Junction.  Florrie’s house is only five minutes from there.”

Mrs Perkins frowned, coughed, and then violently changed the subject.  Mavis gave no heed to what she was saying.  Her eyes were fixed on the baby, which Mrs Budd had put in her arms.

Passionate regrets filled her mind, while a dull pain assailed her heart.  She held the baby with a tense grip as Mrs Perkins talked at her, the while the mother kept one eye self-consciously upon her offspring.

Baby that and baby this, she was saying, as Mavis continued to stare with dry-eyed grief at the baby’s pasty face.  Then blind rage possessed her.

“Why should this common brat, which, even at this early age, carried his origin in his features, live, while my sweet boy is beneath the ground in Pennington Churchyard?” she asked herself.

It was cruel, unjust.  Mavis’s rage was such that she was within measurable distance of dashing the baby to the ground.  Perhaps the dust-cloak’s maternal sensibilities scented danger, for, rather abruptly, it got up to go, giving as an excuse that it must rest in order to fulfil social engagements in Swanage.  When Mrs Budd, her daughter and grandson, had gone, Mavis still sat in her chair.  Her hands grasped its arms; her eyes stared before her.  If, at any time, Harold’s personality had caused her hatred of his family to wane, the sight of Mrs Perkins’s baby was sufficient to restore its vigour.

Then it occurred to Mavis how her love for Perigal, which she had thought to be as stable as the universe, had unconsciously withered within her.  It was as if there had been an immense reaction from her one-time implicit faith in her lover, making her despise, where once she had had unbounded confidence.  This awakening to the declension that had taken place in her love gave her many anxious hours.