"--and for three days six doctors gave me up. Why, I didn't see Jeanette until the fourteenth day, when most women are up and out. The crisis, you know. My night nurse, an awful sweet girl--I send her a Christmas present to this day--said if I had been six years younger it wouldn't have gone so hard with me. I always say if the men knew what we women go through--Maybe if some of them had to endure the real pain themselves they would have something to do besides walk up and down the hall and turn pale at the smell of ether coming through the keyhole. Ah me! I've been a great sufferer in my day."
"Thu, thu, thu," and, "I could tell tales," and, "I've been through my share"--from various points of vantage around the speaker.
It was then that Mrs. Jett sat forward on the edge of the straight chair, and put her question.
There was a pause after it had fallen into the silence, as if an intruder had poked her head in through the door, and it brought only the most negligible answer from Mrs. Peopping.
Almost immediately Mrs. Dang caught at the pause for a case in point that had been trembling on her lips all during Mrs. Peopping's recital.
"A doctor once told a second cousin of my sister-in-law's--" and so on _ad infinitum, ad lib._, and _ad nauseaum_.
That night Mrs. Jett did an unprecedented thing. She crept into the crevice of her husband's arm from behind as he stood in his waistcoat, washing his hands in the carbolic solution at the bowl and washstand. He turned, surprised, unconsciously placing himself between her and the reeky water.
"Henry," she said, rubbing up against the alpaca back to his vest like an ingratiating Maltese tabby, "Hen-ery."
"In a minute, Em," he said, rather puzzled and wishing she would wait.
Suddenly, swinging herself back from him by his waistcoat lapel, easily, because of his tenseness to keep her clear of the bowl of water, she directed her eyes straight into his.
"Hen-ery--Hen-ery," each pronouncement of his name surging higher in her throat.
"Hen-ery, I haven't words sweet enough to tell you."
"Em, tell what?" And stopped. He could see suddenly that her eyes were full of new pins of light and his lightening intuition performed a miracle of understanding.