The window flew up again.
“Hi!”
A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a
bomb.
“Did you catch it?” said the face, reappearing. “Dear me, you missed
it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer’s. Ask for Bailey’s
Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a
little milk. Be certain to get Bailey’s.”
My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the
situation. Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon’s
retreat from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
As we turned up the road we met Freddie’s Angela.
The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at
her and said, “Wah!”
The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
“Well, baby?” she said, bending down to him. “So father found you
again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
morning,” she said to me.
This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered
lunatic it so utterly unnerved me, don’t you know, that she had nodded
good-bye and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my
breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant’s father.
I hadn’t expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more
manly fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his
head. He didn’t speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he
began he did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional,
dear old boy. It beat me where he could have picked up such
expressions.
“Well,” he said, when he had finished, “say something! Heavens! man,
why don’t you say something?”
“You don’t give me a chance, old top,” I said soothingly.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“What can we do about it?”
“We can’t spend our time acting as nurses to this—this exhibit.”
He got up.
“I’m going back to London,” he said.
“Freddie!” I cried. “Freddie, old man!” My voice shook. “Would you
desert a pal at a time like this?”
“I would. This is your business, and you’ve got to manage it.”
“Freddie,” I said, “you’ve got to stand by me. You must. Do you realize
that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You
wouldn’t leave me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we
were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe me a tenner.”
He sat down again.
“Oh, well,” he said resignedly.
“Besides, old top,” I said, “I did it all for your sake, don’t you
know?”
He looked at me in a curious way.
“Reggie,” he said, in a strained voice, “one moment. I’ll stand a good
deal, but I won’t stand for being expected to be grateful.”
Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that
crisis was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the
local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically
incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty
satisfactorily. At eight o’clock he fell asleep in a chair, and, having
undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there
were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew
what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple—a mere
matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I
stirred the pile with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which
might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like
nothing on earth. We looked at each other and smiled wanly.
But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next
bungalow but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their
nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid
dressed and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I showered
wealth on her, and she promised to come in morning and evening. I sat
down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It was the first bit of silver
lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
“And after all,” I said, “there’s lots to be said for having a child
about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
domestic—what!”
Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie’s trousers, and when he
had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said,
the less he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the
kid, who happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his
portmanteau.
“For me,” he said, “the hotel. I can’t write dialogue with that sort of
thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this little
treasure?”