Dr. Burns had placed his ear to the child's chest, which had been bared
for the incision. Dr. Price stood ready to administer the anaesthetic.
Little Dodie looked up with a faint expression of wonder, as if dimly
conscious of some unusual event. The major shivered at the thought of
what the child must undergo.
"There's a change in his breathing," said Dr. Burns, lifting his head.
"The whistling noise is less pronounced, and he breathes easier. The
obstruction seems to have shifted."
Applying his ear again to the child's throat, he listened for a moment
intently, and then picking the baby up from the table, gave it a couple
of sharp claps between the shoulders. Simultaneously a small object shot
out from the child's mouth, struck Dr. Price in the neighborhood of his
waistband, and then rattled lightly against the floor. Whereupon the
baby, as though conscious of his narrow escape, smiled and gurgled, and
reaching upward clutched the doctor's whiskers with his little hand,
which, according to old Jane, had a stronger grip than any other
infant's in Wellington.
VIII
THE CAMPAIGN DRAGS
The campaign for white supremacy was dragging. Carteret had set out, in
the columns of the Morning Chronicle, all the reasons why this movement,
inaugurated by the three men who had met, six months before, at the
office of the Chronicle, should be supported by the white public. Negro
citizenship was a grotesque farce--Sambo and Dinah raised from the
kitchen to the cabinet were a spectacle to make the gods laugh.
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