Mrs. Plumberry with thumb and forefinger raised an eyelid and let it fall again. The baby answered with a vicious kick.
“He’s come to stop all right,” was Mrs. Plumberry’s prophecy. “Hope he’ll like it. Will it be safe for me to put him to the mother, say in about half an hour?”
The woman with closed eyes upon the bed must have heard, for she tried to raise her arms. The doctor bent over her once more.
“I think so,” he answered. “Use your own discretion. I’ll look back in an hour or so.”
The doctor was struggling into his great coat. He glanced from the worn creature on the bed to the poverty-stricken room, and then through the window to the filthy street beyond.
“I wonder sometimes,” he growled, “why the women don’t strike—chuck the whole thing. What can be the good of it from their point of view?”
The idea had more than once occurred to Mrs. Plumberry herself, so that she was not as shocked as perhaps she should have been.
“Oh, some of them get on,” she answered philosophically. “Each woman thinks it will be her brat who will climb upon the backs of the others and that that’s all the others are wanted for.”
“Maybe,” agreed the young doctor. He closed the door softly behind him.
Mrs. Plumberry waited till the woman on the bed opened her large eyes, then she put the child into her arms.