Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/454

 Jamie shook his head.

“No, I couldn’t do that,” he said. “I’m too big and clumsy. I don’t know enough. The little Scout was there and went to the telephone and had a conversation and half an hour later Mrs. Meredith came. She has a small person of her own and it seems that one more didn’t bother her.”

Margaret Cameron made a curious sound, a dry intake of breath which might have been a short laugh if she had not been too unhappy to laugh.

“No,” she said, tersely, “one more doesn’t bother that woman! I’ve heard about her. At the birth of her first child, there was a charity baby and a little millionaire baby at the same hospital and both of them were starving, and for the length of time she was there, along with her own baby she nursed the others and she saved both of them. She got them past a critical period where they could take proper nourishment and retain it, and then they could go on feeding them. And when her next baby came, there were a couple more starving babies and she took them under her wing and shared the nourishment for her own baby with them. And when her third one came there had been a Cæsarean operation a few days before and the baby lived and there was no milk for it, and she nursed it as well as her own. Mrs. Meredith doesn’t stick at doing anything for any baby, that you can depend on. It isn’t hard to see where the little Scout gets a large bunch of lovable qualities, but if she’s got a little person of her own she doesn’t need yours. Maybe that’s the