vanished and she faltered. “My child,” she said, “is—is very ill to-night. I must go, of course. You must excuse me,” and she turned and fled. 

 It was rather odd that the first articulate word that Marjorie said in her life was uttered about that time. She had grown more irritable and had pushed away her father's hand and the drink that the private secretary offered her. 

 “What do you want, little girl?” Miss Vickers asked, and Marjorie, whole weeks ahead of her schedule, said, “Ma-ma.”  

  

  

 III. 

For an incubator baby, Marjorie handled the measles remarkably well. After a first reluctant period when she seemed to prefer death to disfigurement, she blossomed into exceeding spotfulness and rioted in soda baths, and then she gently faded into her usual pink-and-white-ness. The effect on her system was excellent, but to Chiswick, her faithful nurse, it brought distress. 

F

 The world bows down before a sick baby, but a convalescent baby puts its foot on the neck of the prostrate world and then pushes. Marjorie ruled. She demanded many things. She insisted on being rocked to sleep, and sung to, and being held while awake, and all manner of things that her governing committee considered debilitating and antiquated, and Mrs. Field-ing, glowing with newly found mother love, decided that Marjorie must have them. She felt that a little petting would not harm the child, but she was afraid of Chiswick. 

 Chiswick, like an incorruptible guard, was always present, and back of Chiswick was the governing committee, and back of the committee was the Federation of Women's Clubs, and back of that was all the great theory of scientific motherhood and the greater theory of the Higher and Better Life for Women. Mrs. Fielding felt that the eye of the world was upon her, and that Chiswick was that eye. The only way to secure freedom was to put the eye out, so she put it out. She gave Chiswick an afternoon off. 

 Chiswick went reluctantly. She was a lover of duty, and she had but one desire in life, to see Marjorie keep to her schedule. 

 Mrs. Fielding and Marjorie had a good time that afternoon. Marjorie learned to put her arms around her mother's neck and to lay her face close against her mother's face, but Chiswick wandered up and down before the house disconsolately. 

 Prev. P 20/29 next