The babies, to whom then she flew, were with a perfect
nurse. Harry had helped in her appointment.
She had come one evening, early in the life of Huggo,
when a change had to be made from the nurse who specialised
only up to the point then reached by Huggo, and she
had presented herself to them, seated together in Harry’s
study, a short body, one shape and a solid shape from
her shoulders to her shoes, who announced her name
as Muffett.
“Miss Muffett, I hope,” said Harry gravely.
“Unmarried, sir,” said Muffett with equal
gravity and with a sudden drop and then recovery of
her stature as though some one had knocked her behind
the knees.
“There’s nothing to do,” said Harry
when she had gone, “but to buy her a turret
and engage her”; and there was nothing to do,
when she was installed, but enjoy the babies and delight
in them just as a man enjoys and delights in his tiny
ones,—in the early mornings before Rosalie
left for her work, in the evenings when she returned
home.
It all worked splendidly. In those early years,
when two were in the nursery and as yet no third,
there wasn’t a sign that Harry who had married
for a home ever could say, “I have a right to
a home.” He had, and he was often saying
so, the most perfect home. He came not home of
a night to a wife peevish with domestic frets and solitary
confinement and avid he should hear the tale of them,
nor yet to one that butterflied the day long between
idleness and pleasures and gave him what was left.
He came nightly to a home that his wife sought as
eagerly as he sought, a place of rest well-earned
and peace well-earned. That was it! “Things
which are equal to the same thing are equal to each
other.” They had discovered and had removed
the worm of disparity that eats away the heart of countless
marriages. They not infrequently had friends in
to dinner, not infrequently dined at the tables of
friends, made a point of not infrequently attending
a theatre or a concert; but however the evening had
been passed—and the evenings alone were
always agreed to be the best evenings of all—there
was none but they ended sitting together, not in the
drawing-room, but in Harry’s study or in hers,
just talking happiness. Equal in endeavour, they
were thereby made equal on every plane and in every
taste. A reciprocating machine. That was
it!
At least that was how, profoundly satisfied with it,
she thought it was.
Then Benji came.
There were attendant upon the expectation and the
coming of Benji certain processes of mind that had
not been with Huggo or with Doda. When it was
in prospect she had vexation, sometimes a sense of
injury, that again her work was to be interrupted.
It would make no difference to Harry. It happened
that the days of her trial were timed to fall on the
date when a criminal prosecution of sensational public
interest was due for hearing at the Old Bailey.
