"Last week." The woman started to cry, and sympathetically, hardly realizing what she was doing, Linda put her arm about her.
"But why did you wait all this time to come to a doctor?" inquired the elderly man, trying to soften his disapproval by a kindly tone.
"Because," stammered the other, between her sobs, "because my mother thought it would be all right. One of my brothers swallowed a tack when he was little, and nothing happened. And—we live out in the country, and we're so awful poor!"
"I'm afraid it's too late now," sighed the doctor. "I'll make an examination, of course, but if the pin is lodged in the child's lung, there is nothing I, or anybody else—except that surgeon in Philadelphia—could do. And he's too far away."
The tears rolled down the woman's face, and the tiny little girl—about two years old, Linda judged—seemed almost to realize the death sentence, for she opened her blue eyes and uttered a pitiful little moan. And, strangely enough, she reached out her tiny hand towards Linda.
"You precious baby!" exclaimed the tender-hearted girl, touching her hot little fingers. "You are so sweet!"
It seemed almost as if the little girl tried to smile, and at this pathetic effort the distracted mother broke out into convulsive sobs, hiding her head on Linda's shoulder.
"She's my only girl!" she moaned. "I have three boys, but this baby has always been nearest to me.... My—my little bit of Heaven!"
Silently, sympathetically, the doctor laid the child down on his table in the office, and got out his instruments, while Linda drew the heart-broken mother to a chair near-by.
"It is as you feared," he said, finally. "There is nothing I can do."