Violet sulked for twenty-four hours after that outburst, but for a whole week afterward he noticed that Baby was distinctly cleaner.
But whether it was clean or whether it was dirty, Ranny loved it, and became more and more absorbed in it.
And with Ranny's absorption Violet's irritability returned and increased, and sullenness set in for days at a time without intermission.
"_This_," said Ranny, "is the _joie de veeve_."
For Ransome every day brought a going forth and a returning, a mixing with the world, with men and with affairs, the affairs of Woolridge's. His married life had done one thing for him. It taught him to appreciate his life at Woolridge's, and to discern variety where variety had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life and so forth, that interested Ransome; if he hadn't, at any rate he was a man. That is to say, he didn't sulk or nag or snap at you; or nip the words out of your mouth and twist them; he wasn't perverse; he didn't do things that passed your comprehension, and he let you be. For Ransome the world of men brought respite. Even at home, in that world of women, of one woman, when things (he meant the one woman) were too much for him, menacing his as yet invincible hilarity, he could turn his back on them, and work in the garden or play with the Baby. Or he could leave them for a while and mount his bicycle and ride out into the open country. For Ransome life still had interests and surprises.
For the Baby surprise and interest lurked in the feeblest of its sensations; every day brought, for the Baby, excitement, discovery, and adventure. And then, it had attached itself to Ransome. It behaved as if it had some secret understanding with its father. Its sense of comedy, like Ranny's, seemed imperishable. It would respond explosively to devices so old, so stale, so worn by repetition, that the wonder was they didn't alienate it, or disgust. The rapid approach and withdrawal of Ranny's hand, his face suddenly hidden behind its pinafore and exposed, still more suddenly, with a cry of "Peep-bo!" its own inspired seizing of Ranny's hair, would move it to delirious laughter or silent strangling frenzy. And when Ranny wasn't there, and nobody took any notice of it, it had its own solitary and mysterious ecstasies of mirth.