The mother was going in her friend's machine, out to the
club-house for bridge. She was a little late and could not stop though
the child had looked very pitiful and rather pale. He still cried
despite the nurse's warnings, coaxings and threats. At last she grew
impatient, seized him and shook him until there was no breath left to
scream, laid him on his little bed and left the room. After a while
soft, heart-broken baby sobs came from the tired child and he lay still
as she had bidden him.
At the club women dressed in all the extremes of fashion, laughed and
chatted or grew tense and strained as they exchanged their cards. Over
in one corner some of the younger women blew curls of smoke into the
air. The baby's mother sat there.
It seemed very lonely to the little boy lying in his nursery. The sobs
ceased, the baby grew interested in life once more, climbed over the
side of the bed, slipped to the floor, softly opened the door into the
hall. His eyes were swollen and he was weak from the shaking and the
strain of the day and when he reached the shining staircase, his foot
slipped.
The nurse's face grew pale when she picked up the unconscious child. The
doctor said he would live but the spine seemed to be injured and the
full result of the fall he could not predict.
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