sleep without rocking. Marjorie wept. 

 She began by rubbing her eyes with the back of her chubby fists and yawning until her mouth was a little pink circle. That was to tell Chiswick she was sleepy. Chiswick put her in the crib. 

 Marjorie sat up and whimpered, pausing from time to time to look at Chiswick. Chiswick remained calm and indifferent. Marjorie lay back, stiffened her limbs and yelled. Chiswick was not affected. Marjorie rolled over on one side, raised her voice an octave, and shrieked, beating the side of her crib with her fists. She became purple in the face. Chiswick paid no attention. 

 Marjorie, disgusted, became suddenly quiet. She feigned meekness. She sat up in her crib and smiled. She pretended that sleep and rocking were farthest from her thoughts. She coaxed to be put on the floor. Chiswick yielded so far, as a reward of merit. 

 Without an instant's hesitation Marjorie crept to the rocking chair that stood in one corner of the room and tried her latest and most famous trick. It was a trick of which she was justly proud. When she had done it for her mother she had been deliciously hugged, and it never failed to win a kiss from her father. True, she had always performed it with the assistance of a crib leg, but the rocking chair looked serene. Marjorie could stand on her own legs, with something to hold to, and she was going to do it for Chiswick. 

 She raised herself on her knees by the chair, and grasped it firmly by the seat. Cautiously she drew a foot up under her and tested her knee strength. It was good. She raised herself carefully and slid the other foot beside its companion, stiffened her knees and was standing upright! It was glorious! She turned her head to see how Chiswick was taking it. The chair failed her basely. It swung forward in an unaccountable manner and developed a strange instability. Marjorie grasped it firmly and it reared up in front and then dived down again. She cast an agonized glance at Chiswick, staggered, grasped widely in the air for a firmer support, gasped, and sat down so suddenly that the bottles in the sterilizer on the table rattled. 

 The chair, released, nodded at her sagely once or twice and settled into a motionless and fraudulent appearance of stability. 

 Marjorie was not to be fooled twice by the same chair. She tried it cautiously. She put her hand on it and it swayed. She took her hand off and it became still. It was a remarkable mechanism. 

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