All this squeezing and pinching was to pay for a little girl to look after Baby in the mornings. They had found another, and had contrived to keep her. For Violet, though she went on making scenes with Ranny, was quiet enough now when Ranny wasn't there, if only Baby was kept well out of her way. In the autumn months and in the early winter she even had her good days, days of passivity, days of exaltation and of rapt brooding, days when she went as if sustained by some mysterious and secret satisfaction, some agreeable reminiscence or anticipation. And if Ransome never noticed that these days were generally Thursdays, it was because Thursday (early-closing day in Southfields) had no interest or significance for Ranny. And of all Violet's moods he found the one simple explanation in her state. * * * * * On the whole, he observed a change for the better in his household. Things were kept straighter. There was less dust about, and Ranny's prize cups had never ceased to shine. His socks and vests were punctually mended, and Baby at his homecoming was always neat and clean. He knew that Winny had a hand in it. For Winny, established at Johnson's at the corner, was free a good half hour before he could get back from Oxford Street; and as often as not he found her putting Baby to bed when Violet was out or lying down. But he did not know, he was nowhere near knowing, half the things that Winny did for them. He didn't want to know. All that he did know made him miserable or pleased him according to his mood. Of course it couldn't really please him to think that Winny worked for him for nothing; but to know that she was there, moving about his house, loving and caring for his child as he loved and cared for it, whether it was sick or well, clean or dirty, gave him pleasure that when he thought about it too much became as poignant as pain. For there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do for Winny to repay her. He did not know that Winny paid herself in a thousand inimitable sensations every time she touched the things that he had touched, or that belonged to him; that with every stitch she put into his poor clothes her fingers satisfied their longing, as it were, in an attenuated, reiterated caress; that to feel the silken flesh of his child against her flesh was for Winny to know motherhood. Her life had in it the wonder and beauty and mystery of religion. All the religion that she knew was in each service that she did for Ranny in his house. Acacia Avenue, with its tufted trees, with its rows of absurd and pathetic and diminutive villas, was for Winny a shining walk between heavenly mansions. She handled each one of Ranny's prize cups as if it had been the Holy Grail.