Mr. Fielding clapped his hands. “Two hands!” he said. 

 Marjorie looked at him good naturedly. If he was willing to play she could forgive everything. She reached out her hands, and jumped toward her father. Before he knew how it happened, he had pressed his lips to her soft cheek and her hands were entangled in his hair. 

  

  

 When the doorbell rang, half an hour later, Mr. Fielding was on his hands and knees playing “peek-boo!” with Marjorie. Miss Vickers swept her into her crib and helped him to arise hastily. Then she pushed him toward the door. 

 “It is Chiswick!” she whispered. “Hurry!”  

 “Yes!” he whispered in return. “We—we will keep this matter private? It is not necessary to inform any one.”  

 The private secretary watched him nervously while he gave Marjorie a last, long kiss, and then she pushed him gently from the nursery. She really had to push him out. 

 When Mrs. Fielding was appointed to read a paper on Scientific Motherhood at the annual convention of the national federation of Women's clubs, she accepted the task with due modesty but not without a sense of complete fitness. Her mere presence in the distant convention city would in itself be a proof of the correctness of her theories. Under what other system could a mother leave her young baby and devote a week's absence to club duties? She felt quite at ease, however, for the three remaining members of the committee of four were in charge of Marjorie's welfare, and back of the committee was the entire federation of her city. She took the train with a grateful sense of freedom. 

 It was the opportunity Marjorie had been awaiting. No sooner had Mrs. Fielding left the city than Marjorie raised her temperature two degrees, just as an experiment. It was wonderfully successful. It made Chiswick scurry around the nursery with distracted concern. Marjorie raised her temperature a few degrees more and Chiswick telephoned for the committee. 

 The committee came, consulted and wondered what to do. It decided to await developments, and went away again. 

 As Mrs. Fielding sped toward the place where she was to exercise the noble functions of her mind, Marjorie, in the nursery, lay in the private secretary's arms, at times sleeping and at times with wide-open, glassy, 

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