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 But there was also a holiday, the splendid annual function of the provincial doctor, the inoculation of the children. A hundred mothers nursed their squalling, yelling, or sleeping children; they filled up the consulting-room, the passage, the kitchen, and the garden. Annie was wildly excited and wanted to nurse, swaddle, and play with all these toothless, downy children in an ecstasy of exuberant motherhood. The doctor’s bald pate seemed to shine more than ever. From early in the morning he went about without his spectacles, so as not to frighten these scamps, and his eyes were filled with exhaustion and happiness.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night the bell would ring excitedly. Then voices were heard in the doorway, the doctor grumbled and Joseph had to harness the horse. Somewhere in the village, behind a lighted window, a new being was about to enter the world. It was already morning when the doctor returned, tired out, but contented, and strongly smelling of carbolic. Annie liked him best of all like that.

There were other people about the place; the fat, garrulous Nanda in the kitchen, who sang and clattered the whole day and was always being doubled up with laughter. Then the serious, whiskered coachman, Joseph. A historian, he was always reading history books and was delighted to expound the Hussite wars or the historical secrets of the country. Then the gardener from the castle, a great one for the girls, who appeared every day in the doctor’s garden, pruned his roses, clipped his bushes and convulsed Nanda with laughter. Then