EVANGELINE came back from the maternity¹ hospital in the charge of a protective, hygienic nurse with a hard, bright, pink-cheeked face and a naturally hostile and altogether too understanding eye, who seemed to enjoy saying: “You have to keep out of here, Mr Tewler. You can’t come near her for a bit. You can say ‘Good deavning’ from the door if you like. But we must take care of her still. She’s not out of her trouble yet.”

A month of enforced chastity passed and was followed by a second month. Master Henry Tewler ceased to look like a flayed³ monkey in the course of twenty-four hours and began to be attractive. He ceased to squint⁴ and produced real brown hair of very great fineness. He lost any personal resemblances and passed into that phase when babies can be freely exchanged and no one the wiser. He fattened⁵ under a carefully regimented bottle-feeding, for Evangeline was neither willing nor able to undertake that task. He gurgled and waved his arms about and won a smile from his mother and so became the household darling.

“He’s getting artful,” said the proud father. “Think he’s like me, nurse?”

“There’s something about the eyes,” the nurse admitted.

The nurse went at the end of the second month, and Mrs Butter, who more than anyone else was enslaved by Master Henry, insisted on becoming his nurse and protector. “It might be my own little lost mite⁶ come back to me,” she said. A new and slatternly “general” came in by the day to take over the domestic work.

Evangeline was up and about again now and cooking very competently. She was taking in the French costumes she had let out, and bringing them up to date with the help of Mode. She went for a walk round the squares, she went for a drive round Hyde Park in a cab, she went with Edward Albert to a cinema. And still there came no evening summons to Edward Albert. What did it mean?

He brought matters to a crisis. “You’re looking fine,” he said.

“I’m getting better.”

“You’re looking just right. I’d like to kiss you. . . . ”

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