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finest baby--"
"
He's too fine," said Mrs. Redwood.
"It won't go on," said Redwood reassuringly; "it's just a start he's
taken."
But he knew perfectly well it would go on. And it did. By the time this
baby was twelve months old he tottered just one inch under five feet
high and scaled eight stone three; he was as big in fact as a St.
Peter's in Vaticano cherub, and his affectionate clutch at the hair
and features of visitors became the talk of West Kensington. They had an
invalid's chair to carry him up and down to his nursery, and his special
nurse, a muscular young person just out of training, used to take him
for his airings in a Panhard 8 h.p. hill-climbing perambulator specially
made to meet his requirement. It was lucky in every way that Redwood had
his expert witness connection in addition to his professorship.
When one got over the shock of little Redwood's enormous size, he was, I
am told by people who used to see him almost daily teufteufing slowly
about Hyde Park, a singularly bright and pretty baby. He rarely cried or
needed a comforter. Commonly he clutched a big rattle, and sometimes he
went along hailing the bus-drivers and policemen along the road outside
the railings as "Dadda!" and "Babba!" in a sociable, democratic way.
"
There goes that there great Boomfood baby," the bus-driver used to say.
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