"Oh--" she stopped to blow her nose, very violently, and, as it seemed to me, with superfluous thoroughness. I waited till she had done, and then repeated my question. "Oh--" a fresh burst of tears, and renewed exhaustive nose-blowing. I began to suspect that my question, put casually, was of more importance than I had thought, and repeated it once more. "I--can't t-take it out," she sobbed, "I know it--it would die." "But has it not been out at all, then?" She shook her head. "Not once since it was born? Six months ago?" She shook her head. "_Poor_ baby!" I exclaimed; and indeed from my heart I pitied the little thing, perishing in a heap of feathers, in one close room, with four people absorbing what air there was. "I am afraid," I said, "that if it does not soon get some fresh air it will not live. I wonder what would happen to my children if I kept them in one hot room day and night for six months. You see how they are out all day, and how well they are." "They are so strong," she said, with a doleful sniff, "that they can stand it." I was confounded by this way of looking at it, and turned away, after once more begging her to take the child out. She plainly regarded the advice as brutal, and I heard her blowing her nose all down the drive. In June the father told me he would like the doctor; the child grew thinner every day in spite of all the food it took. A doctor was got from the nearest town, and I went across to hear what he ordered. He ordered bottles at regular intervals instead of the unbroken series it had been having, and fresh air. He could find nothing the matter with it, except unusual weakness. He asked if it always perspired as it was doing then, and himself took off the topmost bag of feathers. Early in July it died, and its first outing was to the cemetery in the pine woods three miles off. "I took such care of it," moaned the mother, when I went to try and comfort her after the funeral; "it would never have lived so long but for the care I took of it." "And what the doctor ordered did no good?" I ventured to ask, as gently as I could. "Oh, I did not take it out--how could I--it would have killed it at once--at least I have kept it alive till now." And she flung her arms across the table, and burying her head in them wept bitterly.