"It may interest you to hear," wrote Mrs. Bullivant, "that your sister has a little daughter. The child was born at daybreak this morning. I am worn out with watching. It is a very fine little girl, and both mother and child are doing well. I am not doing well at all. We had that excellent Dr. Williamson, I am thankful to say, or I don't know what would have happened. Of course our darling Judith was mercifully spared knowing anything about it, for she was kept well under chloroform, but I knew and I feel very upset. I only wish I, too, could have been chloroformed during those anxious hours. As it is I am suffering much from shock, and it will be a long while before I recover. Dr. Williamson says that on these occasions he always pities most the mothers of the mothers. Your father—"
But here Ingeborg let the letter drop to the floor and sat thinking.
When Robert came in to dinner late that day, hot and pleased from his fields which were doing particularly well after the warm rains of several admirably timed thunderstorms, she gave him his food and waited till he had eaten it and begun to smoke, and then asked him if she were going to have chloroform.
"Chloroform?" he repeated, gazing at her while he fetched back his thoughts from their pleasurable lingering among his fields. "What for?"
"So that I don't know about anything. Mother writes Judith had some. She's got a little girl."
Herr Dremmel took his cigar out of his mouth and stared at her. She was leaning both elbows on the table at her end and, with her chin on her hands, was looking at him with very bright eyes.
"But this is cowardice," he said.
"I'd like some chloroform," said Ingeborg.
"It is against nature," said Herr Dremmel.
"I'd like some chloroform," said Ingeborg.