vent in correcting Wakefield. He was wiping his fingers on the edge of the traycloth.
He was sticky, argumentative. Before he was quelled, another knock sounded on the door, this time a quick tattoo, signalling a delicate urgency.
"It's Baby," said the singer's voice. "She's been crying for you."
Wakefield flung wide the door. A blonde young woman stood there, holding in her arms a plump infant.
Meg's face was smoothed into an expression of maternal adoration. Her lips parted in a smile of ineffable sweetness. She held out her arms, her breast becoming a harbour, and received the child. She pressed a long kiss on its flower-petal cheek.
At forty-two she had been made a mother by Vaughan, and he had realized his dream of becoming the father of her child. But their inner selves had not been welded together by the birth. She who had never yearned toward motherhood now became extravagantly maternal, putting him outside the pale of that tender intimacy. Sometimes he found himself with the bewildered feeling of a dog whose own door is closed against it. He loved this child as he had never loved Pheasant, who had been so lonely, so eager for love. Meg had named it Patience. "But why?" he had exclaimed, not liking the name at all. "Patience is my favourite virtue," she had replied, "and we can call her Patty for short."
It was an odd thing that while "Mooey," as he was nicknamed, the child of the boy and girl, Piers and Pheasant, was a serious infant, staring out at the world from under a pucker in his brow, Patty, the child of middle-aged parents, was lively, with inconsequent exuberance. She bounced now on her mother's lap, kicked out her heels, and showed her four white teeth in a hilarious grin.
Her uncle poked her with his finger. She reached for his red hair. "Ha," he said, "you young vixen! Look at her, Maurice."
"Yes. She can give a good pull, too"
Meg turned smiling to Minny Ware. "Don't go,"
