"How has he been, Betty?" she said.
Betty plaited her apron; her moon-face was troubled.
"Well," she said, "I think he's been drinkin'. Oh, I'm sure he has--I've
smelt it about him. The third day it began. And night before last he
came in dreadfully late--I could hear him staggerin' about, abusing the
stairs as he was comin' up. Oh dear--it IS a pity!"
The baby, who had been still enough since she lay in her mother's lap,
suddenly raised her little voice again. Gyp said:
"Betty, I believe something hurts her arm. She cries the moment she's
touched there. Is there a pin or anything? Just see. Take her things
off. Oh--look!"
Both the tiny arms above the elbow were circled with dark marks, as if
they had been squeezed by ruthless fingers. The two women looked at each
other in horror; and under her breath Gyp said: "He!"
She had flushed crimson; her eyes filled but dried again almost at once.
And, looking at her face, now gone very pale, and those lips tightened
to a line, Betty stopped in her outburst of ejaculation. When they had
wrapped the baby's arm in remedies and cotton-wool, Gyp went into her
bedroom, and, throwing herself down on her bed, burst into a passion of
weeping, smothering it deep in her pillow.
It was the crying of sheer rage. The brute! Not to have control enough
to stop short of digging his claws into that precious mite! Just because
the poor little thing cried at that cat's stare of his! The brute! The
devil! And he would come to her and whine about it, and say: "My Gyp,
I never meant--how should I know I was hurting? Her crying was so--Why
should she cry at me? I was upset! I wasn't thinking!" She could hear
him pleading and sighing to her to forgive him.
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