Her child lay asleep in an institutional garb of
charity. The father of that child, ignorant of its very existence, was
at that moment, and at a distance of one thousand miles, adjusting a new
rubber stopper to the bathtub in the home he shared with his
parents-in-law.
On one of the empty cots the rather silly silhouette of Lilly's hat, its
buckram rim sadly broken, persisted through the gloom. Her shoes, in a
little attitude of waiting beside a chair, lopped slightly of a
tipsiness induced by run-over heels. In the jumble of changing hands the
black valise of her underwear, handkerchiefs, and baby garments had
disappeared, so her little washed-out chemise, quite dainty, hung drying
over a table edge.
Outside the Home for Indigent Girls a city that took absolutely no
reckoning of Lilly wove its pattern toward another to-morrow.
She was alone with the first realization of her child, in a moment that
might have shaped itself to crush her. She felt a throbbing that seemed
to make a rush for her throat. She sat down on the bed, leaning over
until her body formed a sort of cave about the child.
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