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They were seated at a long table, next to each other. Across from them, and about their age, was one of the young men in te
The girl looked unwell. In a family of tans, she was pale; she picked at her food. It was one of those di
The rather senile retired surgeon who was seated on Wilbur's other side-he was either a Cha
Wilbur Larch was aware that Missy Cha
Wilbur Larch already knew what Missy needed. She needed an abortion. It came to him through the visible anger of young Chadwick or Cabot, it came to him over the babbling senility of the old surgeon inquiring about 'modern' obstetrical procedure, it came to him through the absence of other conversation and through the noise of the knives and the forks and the plates. That was why he'd been invited: Missy Cha
He rose from the table. The men were being sent to some special room-for cigars. The women had gathered around someone's baby-a nurse or a governess (a servant, thought Wilbur Larch) had brought a baby into the dining room, and the women were having a look. Wilbur Larch had a look, too. The women made room for him. The baby was rosy-looking and cheerful, about three months old, but Dr. Larch noticed the forceps mark on its cheek: a definite indentation, it would leave a scar. I can do better work than this, he thought.
'Isn't that a darling baby, Doctor Larch?' one of the women asked him.
'It's too bad about that forceps mark,' Larch said, and that shut them all up.
Mrs. Cha
'How many months along is she?' he asked Mrs. Cha
Quick or not, Missy Cha
What Wilbur Larch could not forgive was the obvious loathing they felt for him. There was an old woman in attendance, perhaps some faithful household servant who had played midwife to countless little Cha
'Send that young man,' Larch told her. 'He should be here, I think.' He meant the particularly hostile young man in te
'You want my help?' the sullen young man asked Larch.
'Not really,' Larch replied. 'Don't touch anything and stand to my left. Just look over my shoulder, and be sure you can see everything.'
That class-conscious look of scorn had all but left young Chadwick's (or young Cabot's) face when Wilbur Larch went to work with the curette; with the first appearance of the products of conception, the young man's expression opened-that certain, judgmental {91} air was not discernible in any aspect of his face, which seemed softened and resembled his te
'I have made this observation about the wall of the uterus,' Dr. Larch told the ghostly young man. 'It is a good, hard, muscular wall, and when you've scraped it clean, it responds with a gritty sound. That's how you know when you've got all of it-all the products of conception. You just listen for that gritty sound.' He scraped some more. 'Can you hear it?' he asked.
'No,' the young man whispered.
'Well, perhaps “sound” isn't the right word,' Wilbur Larch said. 'Perhaps it's more like a gritty feeling, but it's a sound to me. Gritty,' he said, as young Cabot or young Chadwick attempted to catch his own vomit in his cupped hands.
'Take her temperature every hour,' Larch told the rigid servant who held the sterile towels. 'If there's more than a little bleeding, or if she has a fever, I should be called. And treat her like a princess,' Wilbur Larch told the old woman and the ashen, empty young man. 'No one should be allowed to make her feel ashamed.'
He would have departed like a gentleman after he looked under Missy's eyelids at her chloroform gaze; but when he put his coat on, he felt the envelope bulge in the breast pocket. He didn't count the money, but he saw there were several hundred dollars. It was the mayor's mansion all over again, the servant's quarters treatment; it meant the Cha