By June everything was ready. The nursery was furnished, the cradle trimmed, a pale blue perambulator blocked the passage, neat stacks of little clothes filled the cupboards, and Frau Dosch, a hoary person of unseemly conversation, interviewed and told to be on the alert. The idea of arranging for a doctor to be on the alert too would not of itself have entered Ingeborg's head, and nobody put it there. Such a being was indeed mentioned once by Baroness Glambeck, whose interest, increasing with the months, brought her over several times, but only vaguely as some one who had to be sent for when the midwife judged the patient to have reached the stage. Then, apparently, the law obliged the midwife to send for a doctor.
"There is much difference, however," said the Baroness, "between thinking one is in extremity and really being in it," and the patient was apt to be biassed on these occasions, she explained, and inclined rashly to jump to conclusions. Therefore wisdom dictated the leaving of such a decision to the midwife.
"Yes," said Ingeborg placidly.
"Of course," said the Baroness, "all this is different from other illnesses, because it is not one."
"Yes," said Ingeborg, placidly.
"And when I speak of the patient I do not mean the patient, because without an illness there cannot be a patient."
"No," said Ingeborg, placidly.
"Nor without a patient can there be an illness."
"No," said Ingeborg, placidly.
She was leaning back in a low chair watching the sun shining on the tops of the lime-trees over her head, for it was the end of June and they were in the garden. It all seemed very satisfactory. Nobody was ill, nobody was going to be ill. There would be rather a troublesome moment that would be met and got over with patience and Frau Dosch, but no illness, just nature having its way, and then—it really seemed altogether too wonderful that then, quite soon now, perhaps in a week or two, any day really, there would be a baby. And she was going to love it with this passion of love that only mothers know, and it was going to fill her life most beautifully to the brim, and it would make her so happy that she would never want anything but just it.