Inside was a room where a lady wearing a white dress and a white cap sat at a desk. Miss Chandler told the children to sit down and she talked with this lady. A bell rang somewhere.
Presently in came another lady, dressed in the same way as the one at the desk, but she was much younger. Miss Chandler spoke to her and then came to the children.
“This is Lucy and this is Dora,” she said. “This lady is Miss Perrin, and she is going to show us something interesting.”
Miss Perrin took them into a broad hall and to an elevator which went up so slowly that the children could see on every floor they passed, more ladies dressed in white, or in blue with white caps and aprons, and men, too, who, strange to say, wore white coats and trousers.
Dora looked inquiringly at Miss Chandler. She smiled back. There was a queer smell in the air. It smelled almost like Mr. Giddings’ drug-store. Miss Perrin left the elevator and led the way to a door.
The room beyond was unlike anything the children had ever seen. The bare floor looked as though it were washed every hour, it was so fearfully clean! Not a picture hung on the straw-colored walls. All the woodwork was white and the table had a glass top. There were only two chairs, and they were white. You can never guess the rest of the furniture.
All around three sides of the room white baskets stood on tall white frames, and in every basket lay a tiny, tiny baby. A whole room full of babies and no grown people at all!
Miss Perrin went straight to the nearest basket. “O dear!” she said. “Those doctors are so careless. They are forever coming and unpinning covers. Then these persons kick off their blankets and take cold. This one’s hands are freezing.”
Such a very little person to kick off blankets! But they were in a heap at the bottom of the basket and the baby was crying real tears. Dora could hardly bear to see them on its tiny cheeks and to see how pitifully its lower lip quivered. Miss Perrin took it up and laid it against her warm cheek and it stopped being pitiful. Then she tucked it in and pinned down the covers. It did not cry again.
“That is all men know about babies,” said Miss Perrin. “I don’t mind the doctors looking at them, but they never leave them as they find them. No man knows how to put one to bed.”