"THE SONG OF THE LARK" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cather Willa Sibert)

Kronborg hung up the stove-lifter and dusted his fingers.
"It must be Thea. I meant to ask you to look at her. She
has a croupy cold. But in my excitement--Mrs. Kronborg
is doing finely, eh, doctor? Not many of your patients with
such a constitution, I expect."

"Oh, yes. She's a fine mother." The doctor took up the
lamp from the kitchen table and unceremoniously went
into the wing room. Two chubby little boys were asleep
in a double bed, with the coverlids over their noses and
their feet drawn up. In a single bed, next to theirs, lay a
little girl of eleven, wide awake, two yellow braids sticking
up on the pillow behind her. Her face was scarlet and her
eyes were blazing.

The doctor shut the door behind him. "Feel pretty sick,
Thea?" he asked as he took out his thermometer. "Why
didn't you call somebody?"

She looked at him with greedy affection. "I thought you
were here," she spoke between quick breaths. "There is a
new baby, isn't there? Which?"

"Which?" repeated the doctor.

"Brother or sister?"

He smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Bro-
ther," he said, taking her hand. "Open."

"Good. Brothers are better," she murmured as he put
the glass tube under her tongue.

"Now, be still, I want to count." Dr. Archie reached
for her hand and took out his watch. When he put her
hand back under the quilt he went over to one of the win-
dows--they were both tight shut--and lifted it a little
way. He reached up and ran his hand along the cold, un-
papered wall. "Keep under the covers; I'll come back to
you in a moment," he said, bending over the glass lamp
with his thermometer. He winked at her from the door
before he shut it.

Peter Kronborg was sitting in his wife's room, holding
the bundle which contained his son. His air of cheerful