Four Children for the Doctor by Barkins Evelyn;

Author:Barkins, Evelyn;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Frederick Fell Publishers, Incorporated
Published: 1955-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

The Lesser Part of Valor

WE ALL sing the indomitable human spirit, the dauntless will! From Thermopylae and Valley Forge to Dunkirk and Dien Bien Phu, the nations ring with the legendary tales of unwavering courage and unyielding fight in the face of overwhelming odds. Man, it seems, is an international race of inbred, inveterate diehards, dedicated slavishly to the extravagant principle of Never Giving Up. He is, almost instinctively and unbelievably, an eager, deliberate martyr, consecrated at all times to the ideal that the Cause Must Go On.

Even individually, this indoctrination holds. Rarely, any more, do any of us stop to realize that, the glory and the glamor of national heroism notwithstanding, there is still an immeasurable, personal difference between steadfastness and stubbornness. Rarely if ever (and then only in sorry retrospect!), do we pause intelligently on our own, to find the unmarked place where praiseworthy perseverance ends and stupid pigheadedness begins. Mostly, instead, we turn our little daily lives into one big Roman Arena; ready, almost, to die at the drop of one small conviction, lest any of our objectives perish from this earth; sticking to them all fanatically, the same senseless, cohesive way vulcanized patches stick to an inner-tube!

This being inherent human nature, moreover, I hereby offer the above two paragraphs as a complete and sole explanation for my own persistence in the matter of the children vs. Bradley and Me. Certainly, there is no other logical defense I can think of to rationalize my subsequent folly away.

“Well, it was a good try,” I said to John at once, almost the very moment after both of us had finally and regretfully admitted to each other that our television scheme to distract the children from their New Baby Project had failed definitely. “But what do we do now?”

Just like that, you see, I was ready for the next move—and not even for the slightest second, either, was there any hesitation or doubt in my well-indoctrinated mind about the absolute necessity for just some such follow-up move. On the contrary, I raised the question promptly and matter-of-factly, in exactly the kind of routine way anyone turns the page when he comes to the end of the one he was on.

To my utter surprise, however, John was much less so inclined. “Must we do something else now?” he asked a little wearily. “I mean—well, after all, what say we just give the whole deal up?”

“Give it up?” The very idea was unprecedented blasphemy, of course, and I repeated the profane words with horrified indignation.

“Why not?” countered John. “Let’s face it, sweetie: if television and the Lone Ranger and Superman couldn’t do it, how can we expect to lure Lizzie and Martha away from this obsession with obstetrics—by ourselves? No sir! It’s impossible—and we might as well make up our minds to bear it, instead of messing up our lives in futile attempts to escape.”

“But I just can’t bear it,” I answered heatedly. “At least you get out of range most

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