no immediate move to take the creature from him but stood, one hand on her breast, gazing at the wretched sight.
'Holy God,' she said and crossed herself. The boy stared up at his mother's face for some sign of pleasure or anger. Her eyes were now showing a tenderness that the boy had never seen in them before. He knew then that the thing which he had done must be good.
'Is it a baby, Matka?'
'Ies a little boy,' said his mother, nodding her head sorrowfully, 'Where did you find him?'
'Down by the river, Matka.' he said.
'And, the mother?'
'Dead.'
She crossed herself again.
Chapter 2
'Quickly, run and tell your father what has happened. He will find Urszula Wojnak on the estate and you must take them both to the mother, and then be sure they come back here.'
The young hunter handed over the little boy to his mother, happy enough not to have dropped the slippery creature. Now, free of his quarry, he rubbed his hands on his trousers and mn off to look for his father.
The mother closed the door with her shoulder and called out for her eldest child, a girl, to put the pot on the stave. She sat down on a wooden stool, unbuttoned her bodice and pushed a tired nipple towards the little puckered mouth. Sophia, her youngest daughter, only six months old, would have to go without her supper tonight; come to think of it, so would the whole family.
'And to what purpose?' the woman said out loud, tucking a shawl around her arm and the child together. 'Poor little mite, yotill be dead by mon - iing.'
But she did not repeat those feelings to old Urszula Wojnak when the midwife washed the little body and tended to the twisted umbilical stump late that night. Her husband stood silently by observing the scene.
'When a guest comes into the house, God comes into the house,' declared the woman, quoting the old Polish proverb.
Her husband spat. 'To the cholera with him. We have enough children of our ovvn' T11e woman pretended not to hear him as she stroked the dark, thin hairs on the baby's head.
'What shall we call hixnT the woman asked, looking up at her husbancL He shmgge - d. "Who cares? Let him go to his grave nameless," April x8tli, 19o6 Boston, Massachusetts The doctor picked up the newborn child by the ankles and slapped its bottom The infant started to cry.
In Boston, Massachusetts, there is a hospital that caters mainly for those who suffer from the diseases of the rich, and on selected occasions allom itself to deliver the new rich. At the Massachusetts General Hospital the mothers don,t scream, and certainly they don!t give birth fully dressed. it is not the done thing.
A young man was pacing up and down outside the deEvery room; insides two obstetricians and the family doctor were on duty. This father did not believe in taking risks with his first born. The two obstetricians would be paid a large fee merely to stand by and witness events. One of thems who wore evening clothes under his long white coat, had a dinner party to attend later, but he could not afford to absent himself from this particular birth. ne three had
earlier drawn straws to decide who should deliver the child, and Doctor MacKenzie,, the family G.P., had won. A sound, secure name, the father considered, as he paced up and down the corridor. Not that he had any reason to be anxious. Roberts had driven his wife, Anne, to the hospital in the hansom carriage that morning, which she had calculated was the twenty - eighth day of her ninth month. She had started labour soon after breakfast, and he had been assured that delivery would not take: place until his bank had closed for the day. The father was a disciplined man and saw no reason why a birth should interrupt his well - ordered life.
Nevertheless, he continued to pace. Nurses and young doctors hurried past him, aware of his presence, their voices lowered when they were near him, and raised again only when they were out of his earshot. He didn't notice because everybody had always treated him that way. Most of them had never seen him in person; all of them knew who he was.
If it was a boy, a son, he would probably build the new children's wing that the hospital so badly needed. He had already built a library and a school. The expectant