Life caught her and shook her like a helpless leaf in a whirlwind. She went blindly into the bedroom and began feverishly to fling off her outer garments. Presently she made her way back to the kitchen again, and put her lips to the janitor's telephone.
Writhing seconds ensued. Finally she heard the shrill answering whistle.
"Mr. Kelly, is Mrs. Brice at home, do you know? Or Mrs. Napthaly? This is Mrs. Bannister... I'm ill. Will you get somebody?"
She broke off abruptly; catching the back of a chair. Kelly was a grandfather ... he would understand. But if somebody didn't come pretty soon...
It seemed hours; it was only minutes before the blessed sound of waddling feet came to the bedroom door. Old Grandma Simons, Mrs. Napthaly's mother, came in. Martie liked and Teddy loved the shapeless, moustached old woman, who lived out obscure dim days in the flat below, washing and dressing and feeding little black-eyed grandchildren. Martie never saw her in anything but a baggy, spotted black house-dress, but there were great gatherings and feasts occasionally downstairs, and then presumably the adored old head of the family was more suitably clad.
"Vell ... vot you try and do?" said Grandma Simons, grasping the situation at once, and full of sympathy and approval.
"I don't know!" half-laughed, half-gasped Martie from the pillows. "I'm awfully afraid my baby..." A spasm of pain brought her on one elbow, to a raised position. "Oh, DON'T DO THAT!" she screamed.
"I do nothing!" said the old woman soothingly. And as Martie sank back on the pillows, gasping and exhausted, yet with excited relief brightening her face, Grandma Simons added triumphantly: "Now you shall rest; you are a goot girl!"
A second later the thin cry with which the newborn catch the first weary breath of an alien world floated through the room. Protesting, raw, it fell on Martie's ears like the resolving chord of an exquisite melody. Still breathless, still panting from strain and fright, she smiled.
"Ah, the darling! Is he all right?" she whispered.