Anon we went to Kilburn, when grandfather had but one year left to live by the New Scheme and rather more than five weeks by the old. Then he began to play with his toes, and that was the beginning of the end.
I shall not set down here the hard words hurled at me by different lodging-house keepers, who took it upon themselves to criticise my management of grandfather. Because, for instance, I persisted in feeding him latterly on condensed milk, instead of wasting money upon a wet nurse, I was unmercifully abused. But I went my way, and soon had him in long frocks, and took him from Kilburn to Ravenscourt Park. Here I was accused of being a baby-thief, because I explained as usual that the infant’s parents were in India.
"Its ma must be a pretty quick traveller then," said the sceptical landlady. "That hinfant ain’t a day more than three weeks old, or I’m no judge."
She was nearly right. It wanted now but one month to make grandfather a hundred and ten or nothing at all. It was, in fact, twenty-nine days before he was born, or after, according as you look at it. I got very muddled over his age about this time myself. I only remembered the date of his birthday, and realised that on the night before that anniversary the New Scheme would come to an end. The old man was now a mere hairless, blotchy, howling fragment, needing ceaseless attention at all hours of night and day. A bitter thought often came to me while I was getting his bottle--that my tiny grandfather should be going to such an unsatisfactory place so soon. For I never could believe, despite what the lawyers said, that his fiendish opponent had made any radical blunder in the agreement.
As the long days followed each other I became overstrung and hysterical, and felt that a very little more of it would send me mad. I let grandpapa drop out of his perambulator one day in Ravenscourt Park, where I had taken him for an airing. Of course, he screamed as only a frightened baby can, and attracted the attention of a policeman. The constable merely addressed me good-humouredly, but a ribald crowd collected in no time. Boys chaffed, women cried shame on me; an officious old fool, who said he belonged to some institution for the Prevention of Brutality to Infants in Arms, insisted on taking my address. I gave it to him, trundled grandfather home, and moved to Turnham Green the same evening. At our new lodgings I told the truth for once, and said grandfather’s poor mother was dead. The landlady here was young, and had a baby of her own, and showed me great kindness and sympathy. She prophesied all manner of hopeful things for grandfather, but feared that I should never live to see him grow up. There were reasonable grounds for such a doubt, for I was now much more than my age, and growing somewhat infirm. The last ten years had added not less than thirty to my own life. I looked pretty nearly eighty now, and felt considerably older.