"There is much difference, however," said the Baroness, "between
thinking one is in extremity and really being in it," and the patient
was apt to be biassed on these occasions, she explained, and inclined
rashly to jump to conclusions. Therefore wisdom dictated the leaving of
such a decision to the midwife.
"Yes," said Ingeborg placidly.
"Of course," said the Baroness, "all this is different from other
illnesses, because it is not one."
"Yes," said Ingeborg, placidly.
"And when I speak of the patient I do not mean the patient, because
without an illness there cannot be a patient."
"No," said Ingeborg, placidly.
"Nor without a patient can there be an illness."
"No," said Ingeborg, placidly.
She was leaning back in a low chair watching the sun shining on the tops
of the lime-trees over her head, for it was the end of June and they
were in the garden. It all seemed very satisfactory. Nobody was ill,
nobody was going to be ill. There would be rather a troublesome moment
that would be met and got over with patience and Frau Dosch, but no
illness, just nature having its way, and then--it really seemed
altogether too wonderful that then, quite soon now, perhaps in a week or
two, any day really, there would be a baby. And she was going to love it
with this passion of love that only mothers know, and it was going to
fill her life most beautifully to the brim, and it would make her so
happy that she would never want anything but just it.
That is what they had told her. On her own account she had added to this
that the baby would be every bit as clever as Robert but with more
leisure; that it would have his brains but not his laboratory; that it
wouldn't be able, it wouldn't want, to get out of its perambulator and
go and lock itself up away from her and weigh rye grains; and that it
wouldn't mind, in fact it would prefer, being fetched out of its
thoughts to come and be kissed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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