Suddenly the baby lifted her head and stared at us, thrusting into her mouth the dummy that was pinned to the breast of her night-gown. The faded pink sleeves of the night-gown were tight on her fat little wrists. She stood thus sucking her dummy, one arm round her father’s neck, watching us with hazel solemn eyes. Then she pushed her fat little fist up among the bush of small curls, and began to twist her fingers about her ear that was white like a camelia flower. “She is really sleepy,” said Lettie. “Come then!” said he, folding her for sleep against his breast. “Come and go to boh.” But the young rascal immediately began to cry her remonstrance. She stiffened herself, freed herself, and stood again on his knee, watching us solemnly, vibrating the dummy in her mouth as she suddenly sucked at it, twisting her father’s ear in her small fingers till he winced. “Her nails _are_ sharp,” he said, smiling. He began asking and giving the small information that pass between friends who have not met for a long time. The baby laid her head on his shoulder, keeping her tired, owl-like eyes fixed darkly on us. Then gradually the lids fluttered and sank, and she dropped on to his arm. “She is asleep,” whispered Lettie. Immediately the dark eyes opened again. We looked significantly at one another, continuing our subdued talk. After a while the baby slept soundly. Presently Meg came downstairs. She greeted us in breathless whispers of surprise, and then turned to her husband. “Has she gone?” she whispered, bending over the sleeping child in astonishment. “My, this is wonderful, isn’t it!” She took the sleeping drooping baby from his arms, putting her mouth close to its forehead, murmuring with soothing, inarticulate sounds. We stayed talking for some time when Meg had put the baby to bed. George had a new tone of assurance and authority. In the first place he was an established man, living in a large house, having altogether three men working for him. In the second place he had ceased to value the conventional treasures of social position and ostentatious refinement. Very, very many things he condemned as flummery and sickly waste of time. The life of an ordinary well-to-do person he set down as adorned futility, almost idiocy. He spoke passionately of the monstrous denial of life to the many by the fortunate few. He talked at Lettie most flagrantly. “Of course,” she said, “I have read Mr. Wells and Mr. Shaw, and even Niel Lyons and a Dutchman—what is his name, Querido? But what can I do? I think the rich have as much misery as the poor, and of quite as deadly a sort. What can I do? It is a question of life and the development of the human race. Society and its regulations is not a sort of drill that endless Napoleons have forced on us: it is the only way we have yet found of living together.” “Pah!” said he, “that is rank cowardice. It is feeble and futile to the last degree.”