The Grim Smile of the Five Towns | Page 9

mention his
great thighs and calves. The truth was, he had grown so that if he had
been only a little bit bigger, he would have burst the bath. He
resembled an old man who had been steadily eating too much for about
forty years.
His two womenfolk now candidly and openly worshipped him,
forgetting sectarian differences.
And he splashed. Oh! he splashed. You see, he had learnt how to splash,
and he had certainly got an inkling that to splash was wicked and
messy. So he splashed--in his mother's face, in Emmie's face, in the fire.
He pretty well splashed the fire out. Ten minutes before, the bedroom
had been tidy, a thing of beauty. It was now naught but a wild welter of
towels, socks, binders-- peninsulas of clothes nearly surrounded by
water.
Finally his mother seized him again, and, rearing his little legs up out
of the water, immersed the whole of his inflated torso beneath the
surface.
'Hallo!' she exclaimed. 'Did the water run over his mouf? Did it?'
'Angels and ministers of grace defend us! How clumsy she is!'
commented the eyes of Emmie.
'There! I fink that's about long enough for this kind of wevver,' said the
mother.
'I should think it was! There's almost a crust of ice on the water now!'

the nurse refrained from saying.
And Roger, full of regrets, was wrenched out of the bath. He had
ceased breathing hard while in the water, but he began again
immediately he emerged.
'We don't like our face wiped, do we?' said his mother on his behalf.
'We want to go back into that bath. We like it. It's more fun than
anything that happens all day long! Eh? That old dandruff's coming up
in fine style. It's a-peeling off like anything.'
And all the while she wiped him, patted eau de Cologne into him with
the flat of her hand, and rubbed zinc ointment into him, and massaged
him, and powdered him, and turned him over and over and over, till he
was thoroughly well basted and cooked. And he kept on breathing hard.
Then he sneezed, amid general horror!
'I told you so!' the nurse didn't say, and she rushed to the bed where all
the idol's beautiful, clean, aired things were lying safe from splashings,
and handed a flannel shirt, about two inches in length, to Mrs
Blackshaw. And Mrs Blackshaw rolled the left sleeve of it into a wad
and stuck it over his arm, and his poor little vaccination marks were
hidden from view till next morning. Roger protested.
'We don't like clothes, do we?' said his mother. 'We want to tumble
back into our tub. We aren't much for clothes anyway. We'se a little
Hottentot, aren't we?'
And she gradually covered him with one garment or another until there
was nothing left of him but his head and his hands and feet. And she sat
him up on her knees, so as to fasten his things behind. And then it
might have been observed that he was no longer breathing hard, but
giving vent to a sound between a laugh and a cry, while sucking his
thumb and gazing round the room.
'That's our little affected cry that we start for our milk, isn't it?' his
mother explained to him.
And he agreed that it was.
And before Emmie could fly across the room for the bottle, all ready
and waiting, his mouth, in the shape of a perfect rectangle, had
monopolized five-sixths of his face, and he was scarlet and bellowing
with impatience.
He took the bottle like a tiger his prey, and seized his mother's hand
that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into that

insatiable gulf of a stomach. But he found time to gaze about the room
too. A tear stood in each roving eye, caused by the effort of feeding.
'Yes, that's it,' said his mother. 'Now look round and see what's
happening. Curiosity! Well, if you WILL bob your head, I can't help it.'
'Of course you can!' the nurse didn't say.
Then he put his finger into his mouth side by side with the bottle, and
gagged himself, and choked, and gave a terrible-- excuse the
word--hiccough. After which he seemed to lose interest in the milk, and
the pumping operations slackened and then ceased.
'Goosey!' whispered his mother, 'getting seepy? Is the sandman
throwing sand in your eyes? Old Sandman at it? Sh--' ... He had gone.
Emmie took him. The women spoke in whispers. And Mrs Blackshaw,
after a day spent in being a mother, reconstituted herself a wife, and
began to beautify herself for her husband.

II
Yes, there was a Mr Blackshaw, and with Mr Blackshaw the tragedy of
the bath commences. Mr