Where a sick or pregnant mother
was too poor to carry out his advice, he followed her into her tenement
home, sent one of his nurses to visit her, and even gave money when it was
needed to ease the strain of her poverty until she should be well and
strong. Soon scores of the mothers of Deborah's children were singing the
praises of Doctor Baird.
Then he began coming to the house.
"I was right," thought Roger complacently.
He laid in a stock of fine cigars and some good port and claret, too; and
on evenings when Baird came to dine, Roger by a genial glow and occasional
jocular ironies would endeavor to drag the talk away from clinics,
adenoids, children's teeth, epidemics and the new education. But no joke
was so good that Deborah could not promptly match it with some amusing
little thing which one of her children had said or done. For she had a
mother's instinct for bragging fondly of her brood. It was deep, it was
uncanny, this queer community motherhood.
"This poor devil," Roger thought, with a pitying glance at Baird, "might
just as well be marrying a widow with three thousand brats."
But Baird did not seem in the least dismayed. On the contrary, his
assurance appeared to be deepening every week, and with it Deborah's air of
alarm. For his clinic, as it swiftly grew, he secured financial backing
from his rich women patients uptown, many of them childless and only too
ready to respond to the appeals he made to them.
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