Connie was sorting out one of the Wragby lumber¹ rooms. There were several: the house was a warren, and the family never sold anything. Sir Geoffery's father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffery's mother had liked cinquecento furniture. Sir Geoffery himself had liked old carved oak chests, vestry chests. So it went on through the generations. Clifford collected very modern pictures, at very moderate prices.
So in the lumber room there were bad Sir Edwin Landseers and pathetic William Henry Hunt birds' nests: and other Academy stuff, enough to frighten the daughter of an R.A. She determined² to look through it one day, and clear it all. And the grotesque³ furniture interested her.

Wrapped up carefully to preserve it from damage and dry-rot was the old family cradle, of rosewood. She had to unwrap it, to look at it. It had a certain charm: she looked at it a longtime.

`It's thousand pities it won't be called for,' sighed Mrs Bolton, who was helping<sup>4</sup>. `Though cradles like that are out of date nowadays.'

`It might be called for. I might have a child,' said Connie casually⁵, as if saying she might have a new hat.

`You mean if anything happened to Sir Clifford!' stammered⁶ Mrs Bolton.

`No! I mean as things are. It's only muscular paralysis⁸ with Sir Clifford---it doesn't affect him,' said Connie, lying as naturally as breathing.

Clifford had put the idea into her head. He had said: `Of course I may have a child yet. I'm not really mutilated at all. The potency⁹ may easily come back, even if the muscles of the hips¹⁰ and legs are paralysed. And then the seed may be transferred.'

He really felt, when he had his periods of energy and worked so hard at the question of the mines, as if his sexual potency were returning. Connie had looked at him in terror. But she was quite quick-witted enough to use his suggestion for her own

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