Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/368

 “You have someone competent to take charge of a new-born baby?” he asked.

“I have,” answered Jamie. “A fine, cleanly woman who has reared three children to maturity.”

“All right, then,” said the doctor. “Give him the baby.”

The nurse disappeared and presently returned. She put into Jamie’s arms a bundle odorous of castile and boracic, a thing that was warm and alive and moving. Convenient to his reach she set a suitcase, and Jamie put on his hat, crooked his arm around the live bundle, picked up the suitcase, and walked from the room.

The nurse looked at the doctor and the doctor looked at the nurse, and they said to each other: “Well, can you beat that?” . “What do you suppose came between them?” asked the doctor. “If she said things like that about him, why should he leave her, never to see her again, without a tear of remorse, without a touch of affection? I’ve had a good many peculiar experiences in thirty years’ practice of medicine, but this beats everything. I don’t understand it!”

“Neither do I,” said the nurse, “and what’s more, I don’t believe he does. I must go and put in the calls for the parties I was told to send for in the event she died. I think she must have been very much under the weather all the time. I think she came with the feeling that she would not survive, and I think she had that feeling because she did not in the least care whether she did or not.”