Read "The Child of the Phalanstery" by Grant Allen online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
They didn't keep the secret of the baby's crippled condition from Olive till the four decades were over, nor anything like it. The moment she saw Clarence, she guessed at once with a woman's instinct that something serious had happened: and she didn't rest till she had found out from him all about it. Rhoda brought her the poor wee mite, carefully wrapped after the phalansteric fashion in a long strip of fine flannel, and Olive unrolled the piece until she came at last upon the small crippled feet, that looked so soft and tender and dainty and waxen in their very deformity. The young mother leant over the child a moment in speechless misery. "Spirit of Humanity," she whispered at length feebly, "oh give me strength to bear this terrible unutterable trial! It will break my heart. But I will try to bear it."
There was something so touching in her attempted resignation that Rhoda, for the first time in her life, felt almost tempted to wish she had been born in the old wicked prephalansteric days, when they would have let the poor baby grow up to womanhood as a matter of course, and bear its own burden through life as best it might. Presently, Olive raised her head again from the crimson silken pillow. "Clarence," she said, in a trembling voice, pressing the sleeping baby hard against her breast, "when will it be? How long? Is there no hope, no chance of respite?"