While the fire was busy heating the water, he was busier preparing a
bottle for baby--making a hole through the cork of a phial, putting the
broken stem of a clean tobacco pipe he had found in the street through
the hole, tying a small lump of cotton wool over the end of the pipe-
stem, and covering that with a piece of his pocket-handkerchief,
carefully washed with the brown Windsor soap, his mother's last present.
For the day held yet another gladness: in looking for a kettle he had
found the soap--which probably the rat had carried away and hidden
before finding baby. Through the pipe-stem and the wool and the
handkerchief he could without difficulty draw water, and hoped therefore
baby would succeed in drawing her supper. As soon as the water was warm
he mixed some with the milk, but not so much this time, and put the
mixture in the bottle. To his delight, the baby sucked it up splendidly.
The bottle, thought out between the heavy linen and the hard street, was
a success! Labour is not unfriendly to thought, as the annals of weaving
and shoe-making witness.

And now at last was Clare equipped for a great attempt: he was going
to wash the baby! He was glad that disrespectful Tommy was not in the
house. With a basin of warm water and his precious piece of soap he
set about it, and taking much pains washed his treasure perfectly
clean. It was a state of bliss in which, up to that moment, I presume,
she had never been since her birth. In the process he handled her, if
not with all the skill of a nurse, yet with the tenderness of a
mother. His chief anxiety was not to hurt, more than could not be
helped, the poor little rat-eaten toes. He felt he must wash them, but
when in the process she whimpered, it went all through the calves of
his legs. When the happy but solicitous task was over, during which
the infant had shown the submission of great weakness, he wrapped her
in another blanket, and laid her down again. Soothed and comfortable,