Page:In the days of the comet.djvu/362



"No, dear mother," I said. "We shall do better now."

"The club doctor could not come. Your father went twice. There was someone else, someone who paid. So your father went on into Swathinglea, and that man wouldn't come unless he had his fee. And your father had changed his clothes to look more respectful and he hadn't any money, not even his tram fare home. It seemed cruel to be waiting there with my baby thing in pain. . . . And I can't help thinking perhaps we might have saved her. . . . But it was like that with the poor always in the bad old times--always. When the doctor came at last he was angry. 'Why wasn't I called before?' he said, and he took no pains. He was angry because someone hadn't explained. I begged him--but it was too late."

She said these things very quietly with drooping eyelids, like one who describes a dream. "We are going to manage all these things better now," I said, feeling a strange resentment at this pitiful story her faded, matter-of-fact voice was telling me.

"She talked," my mother went on. "She talked for her age wonderfully. . . . Hippopotamus."

"Eh?" I said.

"Hippopotamus, dear--quite plainly one day,