"If you don't call it pampering, what do you call pampering? He ain't
allowed to touch nothing that ain't been--it's slipped my memory what
they call it, but it's got something to do with microbes. They sprinkle
stuff on his toys and on his clothes and on his nurse; what's more, and
on any one who comes to see him. And his nursery ain't what _I_
call a nursery at all. It's nothing more or less than a private
'ospital, with its white tiles and its antiseptics and what not, and
the temperature just so and no lower nor higher. I don't call it 'aving
a proper faith in Providence, pampering and fussing over a child to
that extent."
"You're stringing me!"
"Not a bit of it, Mr. Dingle. I've seen the nursery with my own eyes,
and I 'ave my information direct from the young person who looks after
the child."
"But, say, in the old days that kid was about the dandiest little sport
that ever came down the pike. You seen him that day I brought him round
to say hello to the old man. He didn't have no nursery at all then, let
alone one with white tiles. I've seen him come up off the studio floor
looking like a coon with the dust. And Miss Ruth tickled to see him
like that, too. For the love of Mike, what's come to her?"
"It's all along of this Porter," said Keggs morosely. "She's done it
all. And if," he went on with sudden heat, "she don't break her 'abit
of addressing me in a tone what the 'umblest dorg would resent, I'm
liable to forget my place and give her a piece of my mind.
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