Alice stared frankly.
“You don't mean to say they actually have such things,” she challenged.
“Well, I read about them in a magazine,” asserted Billy, “—how you could have a germ-proof room. They said it was very simple, too. Just pasteurize the air, you know, by heating it to one hundred and ten and one-half degrees Fahrenheit for seventeen and one-half minutes. I remember just the figures.”
“Simple, indeed! It sounds so,” scoffed Aunt Hannah, with uplifted eyebrows.
“Oh, well, I couldn't do it, of course,” admitted Billy, regretfully. “Bertram never'd stand for that in the world. He's always rushing in to show the baby off to every Tom, Dick and Harry and his wife that comes; and of course if you opened the nursery door, that would let in those germ things, and you couldn't very well pasteurize your callers by heating them to one hundred and ten and one-half degrees for seventeen and one-half minutes! I don't see how you could manage such a room, anyway, unless you had a system of—of rooms like locks, same as they do for water in canals.”
“Oh, my grief and conscience—locks, indeed!” almost groaned Aunt Hannah. “Here, Alice, will you please take this child—that is, if you have a germ-proof certificate about you to show to his mother. I want to take off my bonnet and gloves.”
“Take him? Of course I'll take him,” laughed Alice; “and right under his mother's nose, too,” she added, with a playful grimace at Billy. “And we'll make pat-a-cakes, and send the little pigs to market, and have such a beautiful time that we'll forget there ever was such a thing in the world as an old germ. Eh, babykins?”
“Babykins” cooed his unqualified approval of this plan; but his mother looked troubled.
“That's all right, Alice. You may play with him,” she frowned doubtfully; “but you mustn't do it long, you know—not over five minutes.”
“Five minutes! Well, I like that, when I've come all the way from Boston purposely to see him,” pouted Alice. “What's the matter now? Time for his nap?”