Part 4

“Nevertheless, visitors pass daily between your house and Saddler’s Shacks. One of the young men from there delivers bread, often with his bare and probably filthy hands. Two of the women peddle fruit about the neighborhood. What Saddler’s Shacks get in the way of disease, you may easily get by transmission from them. Further, the sanitary arrangements of the shacks are primitive, not to say prehistoric, and, incidentally, illegal. They are within the area of fly-travel from here, so both the human and the winged disease-bearers have the best possible opportunity to pick up infection in its worst form.”

“Ugh!” said Mrs. Sharpless. “I’ll never eat with a fly again as long as I live!”

“Wouldn’t it be a simple matter to have the Bureau of Health condemn the property?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“It would not.” Dr. Strong spoke with curt emphasis.

“Certain features, you said, are illegal.”

“But pull is still stronger than law in this city.”

“Who owns Saddler’s Shacks?” asked Grandma Sharpless, going with characteristic directness to the point.

“Mrs. Carson Searle.”

“Why, then, it’s all right,” asserted Mrs. Clyde. “I know Mrs. Searle very well. She’s a leader in church and charitable work. Of course, she doesn’t know about the condition of the property.”

“She knows enough about it,” retorted Dr. Strong grimly, “to go to the Mayor over the Health Officer’s head, and put a stop to Dr. Merritt’s order for the premises to be cleaned up at the owner’s expense. She wants her profits undisturbed. And now, before the conference breaks up, I propose that we organize the Household Protective Association.”

“Oh, can we children belong?” cried Julia.

“Of course. There are offices and honors enough for all. Mr. Clyde shall be president; Mrs. Sharpless, vice-president and secretary; Mrs. Clyde, treasurer, and each one of the rest of you shall have a committee. Katie, I appoint you chairman of the Committee on Food, and if any more flies get into your kitchen, you can report ‘em to the Committee on Flies, Miss Bettina Clyde, chairman; motto, ‘Thwat that fly!’ Manny, you like to go to the farm; you get the Committee on Milk Supply. Junkum, your committee shall be that of school conditions. Bobs, water is your element. As Water Commissioner you must keep watch on the city reports. I’ll see that they are sent you regularly; and the typhoid records.”

“You haven’t left anything for me,” protested Charley.

“Haven’t I! You’ve got one of the biggest of all jobs, air. If the windows aren’t properly wide when the house is asleep, I want to know it from you, and you’ll have to get up early to find out. If the Street Cleaning Department sweeps the air full of dust because it’s too lazy to wash down the roadway first, we’ll make a committee report to the Mayor.”

Bettina, _alias_ Toots, _alias_ Twinkles, _alias_ the Cherub, trotted over and laid two plump hands on the doctor’s knee.

“Ain’t you goin’ to be anyfing in the play?” she asked.

“I?” said Dr. Strong. “Of course, Toots. Every real association has to have officers and membership, you know. I’m the Member.”

III. REPAIRING BETTINA

“Medicine would be the ideal profession if it did not involve giving pain,” said Dr. Strong, setting a paper-weight upon some school reports which had just come in.

“You’ve been here three months and you haven’t hurt any one yet,” said Mr. Clyde easily.

“No. I’ve been cautious, and perhaps a little cowardly. My place as Chinese doctor has been such a sinecure that I’ve let things go. Moreover, I’ve wanted to gain Mrs. Clyde’s confidence as much as possible, before coming to the point.”

The expression of Mr. Clyde’s keen, good-humored face altered and focused sharply. He scrutinized the doctor in silence. “Well, let’s have it,” he said at length. “Is it my wife?”

“No. It’s Bettina.”

The father winced. “That baby!” he said. “Serious?”

“On the contrary, quite simple. _If_ it is handled wisely. But it means—pain. Not a great deal; but still, pain.”

“An operation?”

Dr. Strong nodded. “Merely a minor one. I’ve sounded Mrs. Clyde, without her knowing it, and she will oppose it. Mrs. Sharpless, too, I fear. You know how women dread suffering for the children they love.”

Again Mr. Clyde winced. “It’s—it’s necessary, of course,” he said.

“Not to do it would be both stupid and cruel. Shall we call in the women and have it out with them?”

For reply, Mr. Clyde pressed a button and sent the servant who responded, for Mrs. Clyde and her mother. Grandma Sharpless arrived first, took stock of the men’s grave faces, and sat down silently, folding her strong, competent hands in her lap. But no sooner had Mrs. Clyde caught sight of her husband’s face than her hand went to her throat.

“What is it?” she said. “The children—”

“Nothing to be alarmed about, Mrs. Clyde,” said Dr. Strong quickly. He pushed a chair toward her. “Sit down. It’s a question of—of what I might call carpenter-work”—the mother laughed a nervous relief—“on Betty.”

“Betty?” Her fears fluttered in her voice. “What about Betty?”

“She needs repairing; that’s all.”

“I don’t know what you mean! Is she hurt?”

“Not at all. She is breathing wrong. She breathes through her mouth.”

“Oh!” There was reassurance and a measure even of contempt in Mrs. Clyde’s voice. “Lots of children do that. Perhaps she’s got a little cold.”

“It isn’t that. This is no new thing with her. She is a mouth-breather.”

“I’ll see that it’s corrected,” promised the mother.

“Only one thing can correct it,” said Dr. Strong gravely. “There’s a difficulty that must be removed.”

“You mean an operation? On that baby? Do you know that she isn’t five yet? And you want to cut her with a knife—”

“Steady, Myra,” came Mr. Clyde’s full, even speech. “Dr. Strong doesn’t _want_ to do anything except what he considers necessary.”

“Necessary! Supposing she does breathe through her mouth! What excuse is that for torturing her—my baby!”

“I’ll answer that, Mrs. Clyde,” said the doctor, with patient politeness. Walking over to the window he threw it up and called, “Oh, Tootles! Twinkles! Honorable Miss Cherub, come up here. I’ve got something to show you.” And presently in came the child, dragging a huge and dilapidated doll.

She was a picture of rosy health, but, for the first time, the mother noted the drooping of the lower jaw, and the slight lift of the upper lip, revealing the edges of two pearly teeth. Dr. Strong took from a drawer a little wooden box, adjusted a lever and, placing the ear pieces in Betty’s ears, bade her listen. But the child shook her head. Again he adjusted the indicator. This time, too, she said that she heard nothing. Not until the fourth change did she announce delightedly that she heard a pretty bell, but that it sounded very far away.

“Now we’ll try it on mother,” said the experimenter, and added in a low tone as he handed it to Mrs. Clyde, “I’ve set it two points less loud than Betty’s mark. Can you hear it?”

Mrs. Clyde nodded. A look of dread came into her eyes.

“Now, Tootles, open your mouth,” directed the doctor, producing a little oblong metal contrivance.

“I haven’t got any sore froat,” objected the young lady.

“No, but I want to look at the thoughts inside your head,” he explained mysteriously.

With entire confidence the child opened her mouth as wide as possible, and Dr. Strong, setting the instrument far back against her tongue, applied his eye to the other end.

“All right, Toots,” he said, after a moment. “Get your breath, and then let mother look.”

He showed Mrs. Clyde how to press the tiny button setting aglow an electric lamp and lighting up the nasal passages above the throat, which were reflected on a mirror within the contrivance and thus made clear to the eye. Following his instructions, she set her eye to the miniature telescope as the physician pressed it against the little tongue.

“Well, Betty,” said Dr. Strong, as the implement was again withdrawn, “you’ve got very nice thoughts inside that wise little head of yours. Now you can continue bringing up your doll in the way she should go.”

As the door closed behind her the mother turned to Dr. Strong.

“Is she going to be deaf?” she asked breathlessly.

“Of course not,” he reassured her. “That will be taken care of. What did you see above the back of the throat?”

“Little things like tiny stalactites hanging down.”

“Adenoids.”

“Where could she have gotten adenoids?” cried Mrs. Clyde.

“From her remotest imaginable ancestor, probably.”

“Why, aren’t they a disease?”

“No. An inheritance. The race has always had them. Probably they’re vestigial salivary glands, the use of which we’ve outgrown. Unfortunately they may overdevelop and block up the air-passages. Then they have to come out.”

For the first time in the conference Grandma Sharpless gathered force and speech.

“Young man,” she said solemnly—rather accusingly, in fact—“if the Lord put adenoids in the human nose he put ‘em there for some purpose.”

“Doubtless. But that purpose, whatever it may have been, no longer exists.”

“Everything in the human body has some use,” she persisted.

“Had,” corrected Dr. Strong. “Not has. How about your appendix?”

Mrs. Sharpless’s appendix, like the wicked, had long since ceased from troubling, and was now at rest in alcohol in a doctor’s office, having, previous to the change of location, given its original proprietress the one bad scare of her life. Therefore, she blinked, not being provided with a ready answer.

“The ancestors of man,” said Dr. Strong, “were endowed with sundry organs, like the appendix and the adenoids, which civilized man is better off without. And, as civilized man possesses a God-given intelligence to tell him how to get rid of them, he wisely does so when it’s necessary.”

“What have the adenoids to do with Betty’s deafness?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“Everything. They divert the air-currents, thicken the tubes connecting throat and ear, and interfere with the hearing. Don’t let that little deficiency in keenness of ear bother you, though. Most likely it will pass with the removal of the adenoids. Even if it shouldn’t, it is too slight to be a handicap. But I want the child to be repaired before any of the familiar and more serious adenoid difficulties are fixed on her for life.”

“Are there others?” asked Mrs. Clyde apprehensively.

“Oh, every imaginable kind. How could it be otherwise? Here’s the very first principle of life, the breath, being diverted from its proper course, in the mouth-breather; isn’t a general derangement of functions the inevitable result? The hearing is affected, as I’ve shown you already. The body doesn’t get its proper amount of oxygen, and the digestion suffers. The lungs draw their air-supply in the wrong way, and the lung capacity is diminished. The open mouth admits all kinds of dust particles which inflame the throat and make it hospitable to infection. By incorrect breathing the facial aspect of the mouth-breather is variously modified and always for the worse; since the soft facial bones of youth are altered by the continual striking of an air-current on the roof of the mouth, which is pushed upward, distorting the whole face.”

“None of _our_ children are distorted. You won’t find a better-looking lot anywhere,” challenged Mrs. Sharpless, the grandmother’s pride up in arms.

“True. None of them has had overdeveloped adenoids, except Betty. The others all breathe through their noses. See how different their mouths are from Betty’s lifting upper lip—very fascinating now, but later—Well, I’ve gone so far as to prepare an object-lesson for you. Three extreme types of the mouth-breathers are here from school by my invitation to have some lemonade and cakes. They are outside now. When they come in, I want each of you to make an analysis of one of them, without their seeing it, of course. Talk with them about their work in school. You may get ideas from that. Mrs. Sharpless, you take the taller of the girls; Mrs. Clyde, you study the shorter. The boy goes to you, Mr. Clyde.”

The trio of visitors entered, somewhat mystified, but delighted to be the guests of their friend, Dr. Strong, who had a faculty of interesting children. So shrewdly did he divert and hold their attention that they concluded their visit and left without having suspected the scrutiny which they had undergone.

“Now, Mrs. Clyde,” said Dr. Strong, after the good-byes were said, “what about your girl?”

“Nothing in particular except that she’s mortally homely and doesn’t seem very bright.”

“Homely in what respect?”

“Well, hatchet-faced, to use a slang term.”

“It’s not a slang term any more; it’s a medical term to describe a typical result of mouth-breathing. The diversion of the breath destroys the even arch of the teeth, pushes the central teeth up, giving that squirrel-like expression that is so unpleasantly familiar, lengthens the mouth from the lower jaw’s hanging down, and sharpens the whole profile to an edge, and an ugly one. Adenoids!”

“My tall girl I thought at first was dull, but I found the poor thing was a little deaf,” said Grandma Sharpless. “She’s got a horrid skin; so sallow and rough and pimply. I don’t think her digestion is good. In fact, she said she had trouble with her stomach.”

“Naturally. Her teeth are all out of place from facial malformation caused by mouth-breathing. That means that she can’t properly chew her food. That means in turn that her digestion must suffer. That, again, means a bad complexion and a debilitated constitution. Adenoids! What’s your analysis, Mr. Clyde?”

“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.”

“And once last week for the same thing?”

“Yes, but what—”

“Pardon me, do you think your mother-judgment was wise then?”

“Well, really, Dr. Strong,” said Mrs. Clyde, flushing, “you will hardly assume the right of control of the children’s manners—”

“This is not a question of manners. There is where your error lies,” interrupted the doctor. “Against your mother-judgment I set my doctor-judgment, and I tell you now”—his voice rose a little from its accustomed polished smoothness, and took on authority—“I tell you that the boy is no more responsible for his clumsiness than Betty is for bad breathing. It’s a disease, very faint but unmistakable.”

“Not Charley!” said his father incredulously, “Why, he’s as husky as a colt.”

“He will be, please God, in a few years, but just now he has—don’t be alarmed; it’s nothing like so important as it sounds—he has a slight heart trouble, probably the sequel to that light and perhaps mismanaged diphtheria attack. It’s quite a common result and is nearly always outgrown, and it shows in almost unnoticeable lack of control of hands and feet. I observed Charley’s clumsiness long ago; listened at his heart, and heard the murmur there.”

“And you never told us!” reproached the grandmother.

“What was the use? There’s nothing to be done; nothing that needs to be done, except watch, and that I’ve been doing. And I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Then I’ve been punishing him for what wasn’t his fault,” said Mrs. Clyde in a choked voice.

“You have. Don’t punish Betty for what isn’t hers,” countered the physician, swiftly taking advantage of the opening. “Give her her chance. Mrs. Clyde, if Betty were my own, she could hardly have wound herself more closely around my heartstrings. I want to see her grow from a strong and beautiful child to a strong and beautiful girl, and finally to a strong and beautiful woman. It rests with you. Watch her breathing to-night, as she sleeps—and tell me to-morrow.”

He rose and left the room. Mr. Clyde walked over and put a hand softly on his wife’s soft hair; then brushed her cheek with his lips.

“It’s up to you, dearest,” he said gently.

Three days later, Betty, overhanging the side fence, was heard, by her shamelessly eavesdropping father, imparting information to her next-door neighbor and friend.

“You’d ought to get a new nothe, Thally. It don’t hurt much, an’ breathin’ ith heapth more fun!”

Pondering a chain of suggestions induced by this advice, Mr. Clyde walked slowly to the house. As was his habit in thought, he proceeded to rub the idea into his chin, which was quite pink from friction by the time he reached the library. There he found Dr. Strong and Mrs. Sharpless in consultation.

“What are you two conspiring about?” he asked, ceasing to rub the troubled spot.

“Matter of school reports,” answered the doctor. He glanced at the other’s chin and smiled. “And what is worrying you?” he asked.

“I’m wondering whether I haven’t made a mistake.”

“Quite possibly. It’s done by some of our best people,” remarked the physician dryly.

“Not a pleasant possibility in this case. You remember quoting Rochester as to closing the schools and repairing the children. To-day, as I heard Betty commenting on her new nose, it suddenly came to me that I was obstructing that very system of repairs by which she is benefiting, for less fortunate youngsters in our schools.”

“You!” said Dr. Strong in surprise.

“As president of the Public Health League. The Superintendent of Schools came to me with a complaint against Dr. Merritt, the Health Officer, who, he claimed, was usurping authority in his scheme for a special inspection system to examine all schoolchildren at regular intervals.”

“Ought to have been established long ago,” declared Dr. Strong.

“The Superintendent thinks otherwise. He claims that it would interfere with school routine. It’s the duty of the health officials, he says, to control epidemics from without, to keep sickness out of the schools, not to hunt around among the children, scaring them to death about diseases that probably aren’t there.”

Dr. Strong muttered something which Grandma Sharpless pretended not to hear. “And you’ve agreed to support him in that attitude?” he queried.

“Well, I’m afraid I’ve half committed myself.”