The Baroness stopped grimly, screwed up her mouth, and shook her head three times with an awful suggestiveness.
Ingeborg looked at her, and then suddenly some words out of her cathedral-going days at Redchester flashed into her mind. She had totally forgotten them, and now her memory began jerking them together. They came, she knew, in the Prayer-book somewhere; was it in the Litany? No; but anyhow they were in that truthful book, the Book of Common Prayer, and they were—yes, that was it: The great danger of child-birth. Yes; and again: The great pain and peril of child-birth.
A quick flush came into her face, and for the first time a look of fear into her eyes. She sat up, leaning on both her hands, and stared at the Baroness.
"Is it so very dreadful?" she asked.
The Baroness merely shook her head.
"It can't be very" said Ingeborg, watching the Baroness's expression in search of agreement, "or there wouldn't be any mothers left."
The Baroness went on screwing up her mouth and shaking her head.
"It must be bearable," said Ingeborg again, anxiously.
The Baroness would not commit herself.
"They'd die, you see, if it wasn't—the mothers all would. But there seem"—her voice trembled a little in her desire for the Baroness's agreement—"there seem to be lots of mothers still about."