Boyce and Edwin entered together. The front room of the house was crowded with people who should have been in bed. They sat clustered about a table on which stood a number of bottles from one of which the messenger had evidently extracted his peculiar perfume. In the corner chair, next to the window, an old woman in a lace cap had fallen asleep. Opposite her a very dirty old man toasted his shins in front of the fire. A strapping girl with dark, untidy hair, and an almost aggressive physical beauty was holding forth shrilly to a group of three women who had wandered in to drink and gossip from a neighbouring court. “Here they are,” said the husband sullenly, “two on ’em.” “My God! . . . Two of them? Is that all?” said the dark girl, examining and, as it seemed, approving. Upstairs they found a midwife of another but equally characteristic type: a fat woman whose attention was divided between the patient in bed and the cheerful company in the front room. On the surface she was a little patronising, an attitude that the two students’ inexperience made it difficult for them to resent. “I know what you doctors want,” she said, standing with her sleeves rolled up over her red forearms. “Plenty of hot water, that’s what you want. I’ve got some disinfectant too. I’ve often been with the ’ospital doctors. Now we shan’t be long.” She bustled downstairs, looking into the front room for a drink on her way to the kitchen. Boyce, confident in the completion of his first case, took the lead in questioning the patient, a slightly older version of the dark sanguine girl they had seen below. Her whole attitude towards the business, though less pathetic than that of the unforgotten Mrs. Higgins, was equally moving. It implied such a cheerful and courageous acceptance of life and this most uncomfortable of its experiences. Her amazing vitality pervaded the room. It could be seen in her masterful smile, in the grip of her red fingers on the knotted towel, in the deep suffusion of her face. A jolly woman, built in the mould of a fighter, who would neither take quarter nor give it. When Boyce had examined her she smiled, disclosing a fine set of teeth, and solemnly winked. “Well, doctor, what about it?” “Listen to ’er,” said the midwife, chuckling. “That’s the way to take it!” “Well, it’s all right, you know, but it won’t be just yet awhile.” “My God . . . I didn’t pay the ’ospital five bob for you to tell me that. Look ’ere, doctor, my elder sister ’ad a horrible time with her first. ’Ad to ’ave it took off ’er. Be a sport, doctor, and give us a smell of chloroform. Come on, now! There’s two on you. . . . ’Ard-’earted devils all you doctors are. Bain’t they, Mrs. Perkins?” She smiled at the midwife, and then, suddenly, her face changed and she clutched at the knotted towel. “Oh, my!” she said, and Edwin saw the veins in her neck swell, and heard her clench her teeth.