Part 18

“That boy? He’s two grades behind where he should be in school. It takes him some time to get the drift of anything that’s said to him. I should judge his brain is weak. Anyway, I don’t see where he keeps it, for the upper part of his face is all wrong, the roof of the mouth is so pushed up. The poor little chap’s brain-pan must be contracted.”

“Perfectly correct, and all the result of adenoids again. The boy is the worst example I’ve been able to find. But all three of the children are terribly handicapped; one by a painful homeliness, one by a ruined digestion, and the boy by a mental deficiency—and all simply and solely because they were neglected by ignorant parents and still more ignorant school authorities.”

“Would you have the public schools deal with such details?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“Certainly. Have you ever heard what Goler, the Health Officer of Rochester, asked that city? ‘Oughtn’t we to close the schools and repair the children?’ he asked, and he kept on asking, until now Rochester has a regular system of looking after the noses, mouths, and eyes of its young. They want their children, in that city, to start the battle of life in fighting trim.”

“But you don’t see many misshapen children about,” objected Mrs. Sharpless.

“Then it’s because you don’t look. Call to your mind Hogarth’s caricatures. Do you remember that in his crowds there are always clubfooted, or humpbacked, or deformed people? In those days such deformities were very common because medical science didn’t know how to correct them in the young. To-day facial deformities, to the scientific eye, are quite as common, though not as obvious. We’re just learning how to correct them, and to know that the hatchet-face is a far more serious clog on a human being’s career than is the clubfoot.”

“If Betty had a clubfoot, of course—” began Mrs. Clyde.

“Of course, you’d have it repaired at whatever cost of suffering. You’d submit her to a long and serious operation; and probably to the constant pain of a rigid iron frame upon her leg for months, perhaps years. To obviate the deformity you’d consider that not too high a price to pay, and rightly. Well, here is the case of a more far-reaching malformation, curable by a minor operation, without danger, mercifully quick, with only the briefest after-effects of pain, and you draw back from it. Why?”

“The thought of the knife on that little face. Is—is that all there is to be done?”

“No, there are the teeth. They should be looked to.”

“Nonsense! They’re only first teeth,” said

Grandma Sharpless vigorously. “What does a doctor know about teeth?”

“Lots, if he knows his business. There would be fewer dyspeptics if physicians in general sent their patients to the dentist more promptly, and kept them in condition to chew their food.”

“That’s all very well, when people have their real, lasting teeth,” returned the grandmother. “But Betty’s first set will be gone in a few years. Then it will be time enough to bother the poor child.”

“Apparently, Mrs. Sharpless,” said Dr. Strong mildly, “you consider that teeth come in crops, like berries; one crop now, a second and distinct crop later. That isn’t the way growth takes place in the human mouth. The first teeth are to the second almost what the blossom is to the fruit. I shall want immediately to take Betty to the dentist, and have him keep watch over her mouth with the understanding that he may charge a bonus on every tooth he keeps in after its time. The longer the first lot lasts, the better the second lot are. But there is no use making the minor repairs unless the main structure is put right first.”

“I must see Betty,” said Mrs. Clyde abruptly, and left the room. Mrs. Sharpless followed. “Now comes the first real split.” Dr. Strong turned to Mr. Clyde. “They’re going to vote me down.”

“If it comes to a pinch,” said Mr. Clyde quietly, “my wife will accept my decision.”

“That is what I want to avoid. Where would my influence with her be, if I were obliged to appeal to you on the very first test of professional authority? No, I shall try to carry this through myself, even at the risk of having to seem a little brutal.”

Mr. Clyde lifted his eyebrows, but he only nodded, as the door opened and the two women reentered.

“Doctor,” said Mrs. Clyde, “if, in a year from now, Betty hasn’t outgrown the mouth-breathing, I—I—you may take what measures you think best.”

“In a year from now, the danger will be more advanced. There is not the faintest chance of correction of the fault without an operation.”

“I can’t help it! I can’t stand the thought of it, now,” said Mrs. Clyde brokenly. “You should see her, poor baby, as she looks now, asleep on the lounge in the library, and even you, Doctor” (the doctor smiled a little awry at that), “couldn’t bear to think of the blood and the pain.” She was silent, shuddering.

“My dear Mrs. Clyde, the blood will be no more than a nosebleed, and the pain won’t amount to much, thanks to anaesthesia. Let me see.” He stepped to the door and, opening it softly, looked in, then beckoned to the others to join him.

The child lay asleep on her side, one cupped pink hand hanging, the other back of her head. Her jaw had dropped and the corner of the mouth had slackened down in an unnatural droop. The breath hissed a little between the soft lips. Dr. Strong closed the door again.

“Well?” he said, and there was a suggestion of the sternness of judgment in the monosyllable.

“I am her mother.” Mrs. Clyde faced him, a spot of color in each cheek. “A mother is a better judge of her children than any doctor can be!”

“You think so?” said Dr. Strong deliberately. “Then I must set you right. Do you recall sending Charley away from the table for clumsiness, two days ago?”

“Why, yes.” Mrs. Clyde’s expressive eyes widened. “He overturned his glass, after my warning him.”