"Yes, of course." (He can't seem to stop smiling.)

Alvade blinks at him and gurgles.

"Oh good! We usually have lots of people to watch her, it's just that sometimes life things happen and her parents need some help." She notes the smile. "Do you want to hold her while I clean? You know how to hold a baby, right?"

"I—um—I haven't really—had the chance before," he stutters apologetically.

"Gosh," she says, mildly surprised. "You don't have to, if you'd rather not, of course. But it's not hard! You just have to make sure you support the head properly. See?" 

She removes the baby from the sling and demonstrates.

Madral is enthralled.

She rocks Alvade a few times, gently. "Like I said, the main thing is that you support the head. Her neck muscles aren't developed enough for her to do it herself yet. You want to try?"

"Yes please."

She passes the baby to him, guiding his arms into the correct position. "There you go. See? Easy."

Alvade blinks up at him.

Aaaaaaaaaaa baby baby.

They're adorable.

Kairda gets to work moving the books back to the shelf. 

Madral is utterly absorbed in the task of holding this baby.

This is an appropriate amount of attention to invest in a tiny baby. She clears the books away, then does the same for the dust.

"It's hard to tell very much about her personality right now. I think she has one, she just has a hard time expressing it without any words or the ability to manipulate objects and stuff."

"It must be very difficult for her," he muses.

"Probably. Most things are difficult at first, so it's probably really difficult to be new to everything at the same time. But it gets easier. And she's surrounded by lots of people who care about her, and that helps, too."

"I imagine it would."

She nods, not noticing any hint of melancholy around this observation. When she's satisfied that the room is clean, she takes a moment to admire the new shelf and its contents. 

"I like the way you decided to display them here. The main thing is that they're easier to store and retrieve this way, but I think it improves the atmosphere of the room, too. Uh, did you need any other rooms cleaned, or is this the only one?"

He shakes his head. "None of the others get this bad. Here—" He carefully and reluctantly offers her the baby.

She delightedly scoops up the baby, then returns her to the sling so that she can use her hands again. She sends him the bill via her everything. Same price as last time.

(And this time, once he's seen them off, he pays her double.)

She takes note of the overpayment this time - she saw it last time, too, but last time it was within the bounds of a reasonable tip. This is pretty clearly outside them. She can think of a few reasons why someone might pay double for ordinary services - ridiculously generous temperament, an attempt to drive home that she did a really good job, an attempt to cause her to prioritize his business over that of other customers, a uniquely strong commitment to some economic theory that doesn't involve trusting the free market to make pricing decisions, some kind of poorly communicated attempt to negotiate for a different kind of service - is that more than a few? She's just not sure which one it is.

She can't think of a non-awkward way to broach the subject the next few times she sees him, so she decides to just keep cleaning his house regularly and figure out a plan of action if the amount escalates further. Maybe it'll go away if she ignores it, and then she won't have to worry about messing things up with her response.

It stays at double, and he never brings it up.

This is weird, but less weird than the alternative. It probably doesn't demand immediate action. She adjusts her set of theories and gives additional weight to "disapproves of the free market", but mostly she lets herself be happy about it and makes sure to keep a regular space open on her calendar. It takes about two months for her curiosity to get the better of her. She figures he probably won't fire her after two months of paying double what he needs to.

"So," she says, in the middle of reorganizing the bookshelf again. She figures this is a good time, because it means she has an excuse not to make eye contact, and she's not great at talking and making eye contact and being nervous at the same time. "You know it's not customary to pay people twice what they bill you, right?"

"I'm aware," he says. "But you seem like a very busy person who makes much less money than I do and could probably benefit from a little more. And I appreciate your willingness to put up with me."

She pauses. She's never really sure what to do when people say nice things to her in real life. Maybe she should work on figuring that out. She's also suddenly really thankful that she's looking at the bookshelf.

"You're really not hard to put up with, you know," she says, after a while. "I mean, I do appreciate the extra money, it's really nice of you, but I'd be happy to come here regardless. Probably because you're the sort of person who thinks about things like that in general. Also the clockwork is really cool. But mostly the first thing."

"Well—thank you."