"Because," pursued auntie, "the young man might like to step in and see this baby. It's the biggest baby ever I see."
"So it is," assented the doctor. "So he would."
He thought, God help him, that it would please me to see inside that room.
And so he called to me, and I stepped forward and found myself in front of a reality. You know the thing, of course: a poor, white woman in a poor, white bed. And—— But need I describe it? You know it all, don't you?
You do not know it.
I know it—now. I know what is the way of the East. I will tell you what I saw.
I saw a bare brown mattress, and on it lay a moaning woman, fully dressed: entirely dressed. And at her head there lay the new-born babe, and at the baby's head another child—a child of six. And when I entered in this child made speech. "Auntie's gointer dress him soon," he said.
"This, my pure young friend," said Doctor Brink, "is a typical mise en scène. Every detail is correct."
"Correct?" squawked the triumphant auntie. "It's a double-adjectived marvel ... You're a genelman, Doctor!"
I ran away from this sick-room. I ran out into the rain.... I observed, as I ran past him, that the boy Frederick had boiled his egg and was eating it.