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doctor?”
    “I hope so. But not here, you know. She’ll need everything rather special. Nurse has gone to ring for the ambulance to take both of you to hospital.”
    “Oh, dear, oh, doctor. Whatever will my husband say?”
    “Your husband has been very sensible about it. He wants to do what’s best for both of you.” Or if he doesn’t, she added to herself, he can be learning.
    “And what’s to become of the children, that’s what I can’t see, and Mother with her leg bad again.”
    “We’ll fix something. You’ve just got to concentrate on this one now. Would you like to see her?”
    The woman on the bed gave a harassed sigh; but her head craned a little over the worn sheet. Hilary carried the shoe box over, and tilted it. “We mustn’t uncover any more of her. They feel the cold.”
    Between the folds of the handkerchief, the tiny unmoving mask in the box lay with closed mouth and eyes, withdrawn and refusing. It had nothing to say to the life that had been thrust on it seven weeks too soon. Its arms and legs were folded in its prenatal posture; its whole grain of being seemed bent on affirming that the unpleasant fact of birth had not happened, or, if it had, could be decently ignored. Its composure made Hilary’s efforts toward its survival feel intrusive.
    The mother’s face puckered, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “The little love,” she whispered. “You do what’s best, doctor. Anything so’s I don’t lose her, bless her heart.”
    Hilary put down the box on the table, and went over to the window, in which tall geraniums excluded half the small available light and air. Looking out, she reflected that Mrs. Kemp had three small children already, one of them “backward,” and a husband who did little for her beyond ensuring that events like this were frequent and regular. She had tried to stop this one, as Hilary knew, by every means short of the criminal, and now— How on earth, she wondered, does Nature manage to pull this trick?
    The rattle of a parked cycle sounded outside; the district nurse came up the path and into the room.
    “The ambulance will be along in a few minutes, doctor. It was Matron herself I spoke to. She was ever so pleased to know you were here, because she was just going to ring you. Would you be able to come straight away, she said, because there’s an urgent casualty just come in, a head injury, she said, and the patient’s unconscious.”
    “Thank you, Nurse. I’ll go along now, if my instruments are boiled.” Hilary stood up briskly, shocked next moment by her own feelings of pleasure and excitement. In the days when she had worked for Sanderson, this would have been simply a typical moment in a packed unremitting routine. Grumbling mechanically, she would have picked up the internal telephone—any scalp lacerations, any bleeding from the nose or ears, any response to painful stimuli? She almost turned to ask the district nurse these questions, but stopped herself in time.
    Her instruments were ready. On her way out through the kitchen, she stopped for a few parting admonitions to the husband, by way of striking while the iron was hot. He lowered at her in sullen resentment— exactly, Hilary thought, as if I were responsible. By this time he has probably convinced himself that I am. Really, these men.
    The Cottage Hospital was in a flutter, with the Matron and Sister in violent circulation; Hilary, who liked smooth-running machinery, felt her irritability increased. The Matron was competent enough in her sphere, but the rare advent of something both acute and complex was apt to go to her head. Probably, Hilary thought, it gets under my skin because I’m going the same way. In reaction, she affected an easy social manner, which put the Matron on her dignity and produced a certain amount of simmering-down.
    It emerged that the history of the patient’s injury was unknown, for he had been found lying in the road and had not since recovered consciousness.