‘We don’t like clothes, do we?’ said his mother.  ’We want to tumble back into our tub.  We aren’t much for clothes anyway.  We’se a little Hottentot, aren’t we?’

And she gradually covered him with one garment or another until there was nothing left of him but his head and his hands and feet.  And she sat him up on her knees, so as to fasten his things behind.  And then it might have been observed that he was no longer breathing hard, but giving vent to a sound between a laugh and a cry, while sucking his thumb and gazing round the room.

’That’s our little affected cry that we start for our milk, isn’t it?’ his mother explained to him.

And he agreed that it was.

And before Emmie could fly across the room for the bottle, all ready and waiting, his mouth, in the shape of a perfect rectangle, had monopolized five-sixths of his face, and he was scarlet and bellowing with impatience.

He took the bottle like a tiger his prey, and seized his mother’s hand that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into that insatiable gulf of a stomach.  But he found time to gaze about the room too.  A tear stood in each roving eye, caused by the effort of feeding.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ said his mother.  ’Now look round and see what’s happening.  Curiosity!  Well, if you will bob your head, I can’t help it.’

‘Of course you can!’ the nurse didn’t say.

Then he put his finger into his mouth side by side with the bottle, and gagged himself, and choked, and gave a terrible—­ excuse the word—­hiccough.  After which he seemed to lose interest in the milk, and the pumping operations slackened and then ceased.

‘Goosey!’ whispered his mother, ’getting seepy?  Is the sandman throwing sand in your eyes?  Old Sandman at it?  Sh—­’ ...  He had gone.

Emmie took him.  The women spoke in whispers.  And Mrs Blackshaw, after a day spent in being a mother, reconstituted herself a wife, and began to beautify herself for her husband.

II

Yes, there was a Mr Blackshaw, and with Mr Blackshaw the tragedy of the bath commences.  Mr Blackshaw was a very important young man.  Indeed, it is within the mark to say that, next to his son, he was the most important young man in Bursley.  For Mr Blackshaw was the manager of the newly opened Muncipal Electricity Works.  And the Municipal Electricity had created more excitement and interest than anything since the 1887 Jubilee, when an ox was roasted whole in the market-place and turned bad in the process.  Had Bursley been a Swiss village, or a French country town, or a hamlet in Arizona, it would have had its electricity fifteen years ago, but being only a progressive English Borough, with an annual value of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, it struggled on with gas till well into the twentieth century.  Its great neighbour Hanbridge had become acquainted with electricity in the nineteenth century.