The neighbor woman, her kindly mouth half open with anxiety and surprise, whispered to her sister, “Poor dear, she’s all worn out. Look, would you, he has his mother’s hair and eyes,” and she turned her bundle to me. I could see no eyes among the furrows of the ancient, vociferous face. But I pitied the improbable thing and against my will felt drawn toward it and asked if I might see its hands and feet, for I wondered if they, like the useless bud of a nose, had been executed as amateurishly. Indeed, no! Several authors had collaborated on the composition of this creature. The novice band that had created the nose which possessed only one property common to noses, that is, two large nostrils, had not been the same one which, with so grim and un-Christian a humor, had made the long, prehensile feet with all five toes the same length, flexing and straightening as though a jungle vine to swing on were just outside their reach.

“Somebody’s pleased with her little brother, that’s not hard to see,” said Mrs. Henderson’s sister with a giggle as she held out a finger for the gruesome foot to grip. Brother! I felt with this prodigy only the most general fraternity: we breathed and were flesh. And yet, immediately the words were out, a leaven commenced to resolve my wonder into the emotion the woman had assumed in me and my pity became protective. Almost as soon as my instinct to mother him matured, there came to me the more complicated feeling of love, so that I longed to hold him myself and to kiss his bawling, cockled face, and to bestow upon him all the tender services that were the right of anything so supremely helpless.

He was, said Mrs. Henderson to her sister, a “puny one,” and the sister, feeling his feet and skinny legs, agreed, although she said she had seen punier. My mother, who lay with her eyes closed, scarcely moved her lips when she said, “If it’s true he’s puny like you say, maybe he won’t live forever.”

The midwife cried, “Oh, perhaps he’s a little small, but he’s healthy as you please. Just look at these fine hands and feet. Why, he has lovely bones, Mrs. Marburg!” But my mother had no wish to feel her son’s well-shaped feet. Her hands curled as though protecting themselves from contact with the baby and only when he was taken from the room did her long, scarred fingers lie straight upon the coverlet.

Thinking she would fall asleep, I started to follow the women into the kitchen, but she called me back, piteously begging me not to leave her, and when I had gone to the bedside, she grasped my hand and would not let it go. From under the lids of her still closed eyes, a few tears seeped out. I was shocked at the sight of them and felt my throat grow thick.