"That shows how much you know about it!" cried Jacqueline with a sort of agonized triumph. "I can't have any more! The doctor said so. I heard him whispering to Jemmy, when he thought I was asleep, and I made her tell me. She didn't want to, but she thought I'd better know.... It isn't as if it would kill me to have them, Mother—that wouldn't matter! But it would kill them. It takes too long. Something is wrong about me."
Kate glanced at Philip in shocked questioning. He nodded slightly.
"So now you know the sort God is, Mother! Cruel, cruel! Just because I wasn't good.... Think of it, never any babies! No one to play with, and pet, and take care of.... No one that needs me, or wants me...."
Philip bent over her, "My darling, the world is full of babies!"
"But not mine. Not one that wants me.—Oh, how my breast aches, how my breast aches."
"This won't do," murmured Jemima, anxiously. "She's working herself up into a fever again. I'm going to call the doctor."
Philip whispered something in her ear, and she hurried to the door.
There was a sound outside that stopped the frantic words on Jacqueline's lips. "What's that?" she breathed. It came again; the fretful whimper of a sleepy child.
Jemima came into the room, carrying small Kitty, newly awakened from a nap on somebody's comfortable knees, and naturally resentful.
"O-oh!" gasped Jacqueline on a long-drawn breath. "Give her to me!"