"For if you'd heard of it before, I don't believe you'd have been as ready as Deborah was, apparently, to risk infecting the children here." Edith's voice was gentle, slow and relentless.

There was still a reflection in her eyes of the tenderness which had been there as she had soothed her child to sleep.

"As time goes on, John is bound to get worse.

The risk will be greater every week." "Oh, pshaw!" cried her father.

"No such thing! You're just scaring yourself over nothing at all!" "Doctor Lake didn't think I was." Lake was the big child specialist in whose care Edith's children had been for years.