“For my part,” put in a pale-eyed blonde, who sat near the door, “’t seems but yestiddy I was here with Alsia yonder.”  She nodded her head towards a girl of five who was screwing herself round in her chair and trying to peep out of the window.

“Ay, they come and come:  the Lord knows wherefore,” the tall woman assented.  “When they’m young they make your arms ache, an’ when they grow up they make your heart ache.”

“But ’Melia Penaluna’s been here more times than any of us,” said the blonde with a titter, directing her eyes towards a corner of the room.  The rest looked too, and laughed.  Turning, I saw that the plain-faced woman had unwound her comforter, and now I could see, hanging low on her chest, an immense lump wrapped in clean white linen and bound up with a gaudy yellow handkerchief.  It was a goitre.

“Iss, my dears,” she answered, touching it and smiling, but with tears in her eyes; “this here’s my only child, an’ iver will be.  Ne’er a man’ll look ‘pon me, so I’m forced to be content wi’ this babe and clothe ’en pretty, as you see.  Ah, you’m lucky, you’m lucky, though you talk so!”

“She’s terrible fond o’ childer,” said one of the women audibly, addressing me.  “How many ’noculations have you ’tended, ’Melia?”

“Six-an’-twenty, countin’ to-day,” ’Melia announced with pride in her trembling voice.  But at this point one of the infants began to cry, and before he could be hushed the noise of wheels sounded down the road, and Dr. Rodda drove up in his reedy gig.

He was a round, dapper practitioner, with slightly soiled cuffs and an extremely business-like manner.  On entering the room he jerked his head in a general nod to all present, and stepping to the table, drew a small packet from his waistcoat, and unfolded it.  It contained about a score of small pieces of ivory, pointed like pens, but flat.  Then, pulling out a paper and consulting it hastily, he set to work, beginning with the child that lay on the blonde woman’s lap, next to the door.

I looked around.  The children were staring with wide, admiring eyes.  Their mothers also watched, but listlessly, still suckling their babes as each waited its turn.  Only ’Melia Penaluna winced and squeezed her hands together whenever a feeble wailing told that one of the vaccine points had made itself felt.

“Do ’ee think it hurts the poor mites?” the youngest mother asked.

“Not much, I reckon,” answered the big woman.

Nevertheless her own child cried pitifully when its turn came.  And as it cried, the childless woman in the corner got off her chair and ran forward tremulously.

“’Becca, let me take him.  Do’ee, co!”

“’Melia Penaluna, you’m no better ’n a fool.”

But poor, misnamed Amelia was already back in her corner with the child, hugging it, kissing it, rocking it in her arms, crooning over it, holding it tightly against the lump that hung down on her barren bosom.  Long after the baby had ceased to cry she sat crooning and yearning over it.  And the mothers watched her, with wonder and scornful amusement in their eyes.