First of all, the woodwork cracked and the paint came off in blisters, and the dirt that got into the seams and holes and places stayed there. Granville was visited with a plague of fine dust. It settled on everything; it penetrated; it worked its way in everywhere. Violet, going round languidly with a silly feather brush, made no headway against the pest. "For Heaven's sake get it out," said Ransome, "or we shall all be swallowed up in it and die." "Get it out yourself, if you can," said Violet. "You'll soon see how you like my job." She was developing more and more a power of acrimonious and unanswerable retort. "Can't you let it be, Ranny?" (He had found the feather brush.) "No. It's spoiling all my O.K. cuffs and collars." "I can't help your cuffs and collars. What do you suppose it's doing to mine?" Ransome went on flourishing the feather brush. Presently he began to cough and sneeze. "If you wouldn't rouse it," said Violet, "it would do less harm." He admitted that the dust was terrible when roused. So the dust got the better of them. Ransome was not the sort of man who could go about poking his nose into cupboards and places, or flourish a feather brush with a serious intention. He was even more incapable of badgering a beautiful girl whom he had already wronged sufficiently, who declared herself to be sufficiently handicapped by Baby. Since the Baby came he had abstained from comment on his wife's shortcomings; though in the matter of meals, for instance, she had begun to add unpunctuality to incompetence. Ransome would have considered himself "pretty flabby" if he couldn't rough it. But he found himself looking forward more and more to the days they spent at Wandsworth, those rare but extensive Sundays that covered the hours of two square meals, not counting tea-time. Then there was the hamper from Hertfordshire. To be sure, in common decency, it could only be regarded as a lucky windfall, but providentially the windfall was beginning to occur at frequent intervals. The Ushers must have had an inkling. Everybody who came to the house could perceive the awful deterioration in the food. The next thing Ransome noticed was a faint, a very faint, but still perceptible deterioration in himself. And by "himself" Ranny meant in general his physique and in particular his muscles. They were not flabby--Heaven forbid!--but they were not the superb muscles that they had been. All last year he had attended the Gymnasium religiously once a week, just to keep in form. This year his wife was having a bad time, and it wasn't fair to leave her too much by herself. Instead of going to the Polytechnic he practised with his dumb-bells in the back bedroom. And now and then after Violet had gone to bed he sprinted. There was no need to worry about himself. What Ranny worried about was the steady, slow deterioration in the Baby.