Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/229

Rh looked at everything, they looked together into the bottles which Doctor Sammet held up to the window, and their eyes looked thoughtful while the same little look of repulsion hovered round their mouths.

They took turns too at the microscope, examined, with one eye placed to the lens, a malignant secretion, a piece of blue-stained tissue stuck on a slide, with tiny spots showing near the big patch. The spots were bacilli. Klaus Heinrich wanted Miss Spoelmann to take the first turn at the microscope, but she declined, knitting her brows and pouting, as much as to say: "On no account whatever." So he took the precedence, for it seemed to him that it really did not matter who got the first look at such serious and fearful things as bacilli. And after this they were conducted up to the second story, to the infants.

They both laughed at the chorus of squalls which reached their ears while they were still on the stairs. And then they went with their party through the ward between the beds, bent side by side over the bald-headed little creatures, sleeping with closed fists or screaming with all their might and showing their naked gums—they stopped their ears and laughed again. In a kind of oven, warmed to a moderate heat lay a new-born baby.

And Doctor Sammet showed his distinguished guests a pauper baby with the grey look of a corpse and hideous big hands, the sign of a miscarriage.&hellip; He lifted a squealing baby out of its cot, and it at once stopped screaming. With the touch of an expert he rested the limp head in the hollow of his hand and showed the little red creature blinking and twitching spasmodically to the two—Klaus Heinrich and Miss Spoelmann, who stood side by side and looked down at the infant. Klaus Heinrich stood watching with his heels together as Doctor Sammet laid the baby back in its cot, and when he turned round he met Miss Spoelmann's searching gaze, as he had expected.