"Hard-hearted wretches!" she said, viciously pounding the mouse, which had been cooked to a cinder. "They can laugh and sing while my child is sick; they don't care. But their time will come!" she added, as she mixed the dark powder with some brown sugar and butter, and, with cooing, tender words, she coaxed the little moaning baby to swallow the unsavory morsel. At the same time Dr. Hughes entered, breezy and fresh from his drive over the hill.
"Hello!" he called, as his portly form filled up the whole doorway. "What's wrong here? I met Hugh Morgan down the road, and he told me I was wanted here. What is it, Gwen? Hello!" he said again, in quite an altered tone, as he caught sight of the little panting baby, its pretty lips discoloured with smears of butter and sugar and something worse. "What's this?" and he looked in anger from one woman to another. "How dare you! You have been trying some of your filthy messes again, and with the usual result. You have killed your baby. Had you sent for me in time, I might have saved him; it is now too late."
At the words "too late" Gwen screamed, and snatched the little one from its grandmother's lap. Disturbed by the scream it opened its eyes for a moment, and then died with a little fluttering gasp.
"There, lay it down, poor little thing," said the doctor; "you can do no more for it; but next time you see a baby dying, don't add to its pain by stuffing filthy things into its mouth."
Gwen fixed her heavy-lidded eyes upon the doctor with an angry look, saying:
"Go out of my house if you can do no good, and leave me to my sorrow. You will repent of this."
"Of what, woman?"
She made no answer further than to point to the door, and Dr. Hughes went out, shrugging his shoulders.
Through the open doorway the singing of the children came in on the breeze.
"Fileiniaid," Gwen said, shaking her clenched fist at the doorway. "I hate them. Are they all to be happy while I am miserable?" and hastily rising, she took her little dead baby in her arms, and pressing it to her bosom, paced moaning up and down the room; while Lallo, even in her fresh sorrows remembering the village proprieties, closed the door and covered up the little window with a pocket handkerchief, and, with no little difficulty, at last persuaded Gwen to lay the child on the bed.