The door opened and Elspeth stood in the doorway.
“ Well my pet?” said Harriett and Gerald gently, together.
She trotted round the open door, carefully closing it with her body, her steady eyes taking in the disposition of affairs. In a moment she stood near the table, the silky rounded golden crown of her head rising just above it. Miriam thrilled at her nearness, delighting in the firm clutch of the tiny hand on the edge of the table, the gentle shapely bulge of the ends of her hair inturned towards her neck, the little busy bustling expression of her bunchy motionless little muslin dress. Suddenly she looked up in her way, Gerald’s disarming gentleness, all Eve’s reined-in gaiety … “I your baby?” she asked with a small lunge of affection. Miriam blushed. The tiny thing had remembered from yesterday. … Yes, she murmured encircling her and pressing her lips to the warm silken top of her head. Gerald burst into loud wailing. Elspeth moved backwards towards Harriett and stood propped against her, contemplating him with sunny interest. Harriett’s firm ringed hand covered the side of her head.
“Poor Poppa,” she suggested.
“Be cri -ut Gerald!” Elspeth cried serenely, frowning with effort. She stood on tiptoe surveying the contents of the table and waved a peremptory hand towards the gramophone. Gerald tried to make a bargain. Lifted on to Harriett’s knee she bunched her hands and sat compact. The direct rays made her head a little sunlit sphere, smoothly