She shook her beautiful head.
"It is a bad practice," she said; "more babes are killed by drugs than die a natural death."
I was determined she should look at me; I stepped forward and touched the child's face.
"Do you not think it is merciful at times to give a child like this drugs when it has to die; to lessen the pain of death—to keep it from crying out?"
Ah, me, that startled fear that leaped into her eyes, the sudden quiver on the beautiful face.
"I do not know," she said; "I do not understand such things."
"What can it matter," I said, "whether a little child like this dies conscious or not? It cannot pray—it must go straight to Heaven! Do you not think anyone who loved it, and had to see it die, would think it greatest kindness to drug it?"
My eyes held hers; I would not lose their glance; she could not take them away. I saw the fear leap into them, then die away; she was saying to herself, what could I know?
But I knew. I remembered what the doctor said in Brighton when the inquest was held on the tiny white body, "that it had been mercifully drugged before it was drowned."
"I cannot tell," she replied, with a gentle shake of the head. "I only know that unfortunately the poor people use these kind of cordials too readily. I should not like to decide whether in a case like this it is true kindness or not."