They took turns too at the microscope, examined, with one eye placed to the lens, a malignant secretion, a piece of blue-stained tissue stuck on a slide, with tiny spots showing near the big patch. The spots were bacilli. Klaus Heinrich wanted Miss Spoelmann to take the first turn at the microscope, but she declined, knitting her brows and pouting, as much as to say: “On no account whatever.” So he took the precedence, for it seemed to him that it really did not matter who got the first look at such serious and fearful things as bacilli. And after this they were conducted up to the second story, to the infants.
They both laughed at the chorus of squalls which reached their ears while they were still on the stairs. And then they went with their party through the ward between the beds, bent, side by side over the bald-headed little creatures, sleeping with closed fists or screaming with all their might and showing their naked gums—they stopped their ears and laughed again. In a kind of oven, warmed to a moderate heat lay a new-born baby.
And Doctor Sammet showed his distinguished guests a pauper baby with the grey look of a corpse and hideous big hands, the sign of a miscarriage…. He lifted a squealing baby out of its cot, and it at once stopped screaming. With the touch of an expert he rested the limp head in the hollow of his hand and showed the little red creature blinking and twitching spasmodically to the two—Klaus Heinrich and Miss Spoelmann, who stood side by side and looked down at the infant. Klaus Heinrich stood watching with his heels together as Doctor Sammet laid the baby back in its cot, and when he turned round he met Miss Spoelmann's searching gaze, as he had expected.
Finally they walked to one of the three windows of the ward and looked out over the squalid suburb, down into the street where, surrounded by children, the brown Court carriage and Imma's smart dark-red motor car stood one behind the other. The Spoelmanns' chauffeur, shapeless in his fur coat, was leaning back in his seat with one hand on the steering-wheel of the powerful car, and watched his companion, the footman in white, trying to start a conversation, by the carriage in front, with Klaus Heinrich's coachman.
“Our neighbours,” said Doctor Sammet, holding back the white net curtain with one hand, “are the parents of our patients. Late in the evening the tipsy fathers roll shouting by. Yes.”
They stood and listened, but Doctor Sammet said nothing further about the fathers and so they broke off, as they had now seen everything.
The procession, with Klaus Heinrich and Imma at the head, proceeded down the staircase and found the nurses again assembled in the front hall. Leave was taken with compliments and clapping together of heels, curtseys, and bows. Klaus Heinrich, standing stiffly in front of Doctor Sammet, who listened to him with his head on one side and his hand on his watch-chain, expressed himself, in his wonted form of words, highly satisfied with what he had seen, while he felt that Imma Spoelmann's great eyes were resting upon him. He, with Herr von Braunbart, accompanied Miss Spoelmann to her car when the leave-taking from the surgeons and nurses was over. Klaus Heinrich and Miss Spoelmann, while they crossed the pavement between children and women with children in their arms, and for a short time by the broad step of the motor car, exchanged the following remarks:
“It has been a great pleasure to meet you,” he said.
She answered nothing to this, but pouted and wagged her head a little from side to side.
“It was an absorbing inspection,” he went on. “A regular eye-opener.”