The Incubator Baby
insult, and Marjorie considered it one. 

 Where were the pink and white playfellows? A ripple shook the white of her lace-decked skirt; two lumps arose in it; they pushed upward higher and higher until the skirt slid back, and peeping over its edge came ten rosy toes that twinkled at her mischievously. Marjorie held out her hand appealingly, and the two plump feet, that had not dared to venture into the atmosphere of the scientific nursery, cast aside their hesitation, and met the waiting hands half way. 

 “Sakes alive!” exclaimed Chiswick, “if the child isn't trying to put both its feet in its mouth!”  

 Marjorie lay in blissful content; she had found human companionship. 

  

  

 II 

It must be said, to the credit of incubators and science, that Marjorie was a beautifully normal baby. Mrs. Fielding took the greatest possible satisfaction in that. She was always ready to show Marjorie's record charts to visitors, and it was touching to see with what motherly pride she exhibited them. There was not another baby in the town that had maintained such an even temperature, such a steady respiration, or such a reliably even pulse. 

I

 Mr. Fielding was no less proud of the record. He bragged about it at the club and tried to induce his married friends to allow their babies to enter temperature matches with Marjorie, offering to wager two to one that Marjorie could maintain a normal temperature for a longer time than any baby of her age and weight. 

 When Marjorie reached six months Mr. Fielding decided that she deserved a reward of merit, and he made her a present of an oak filing cabinet of sixteen drawers, together with three thousand index cards. There was the food drawer, with cards for every day of the year, and places on each card to note the time of every feeding, the ounces of food taken, the minutes Marjorie required to take the food, the formula of the food, and the average cost of food per hour. 


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