“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.
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.
There was the clothing drawer, with cards on which to record the weight of clothing worn, the temperature of the air, the number of pieces of clothing worn, the method by which the garments were washed, and for remarks on the comparative good effects of cotton, wool, silk, and linen garments.
There were cards for sleep records, weight records, temperature, respiration, and pulse records—in fact Marjorie was analyzed and specified until one could tell at a glance just how many thousandths of an ounce of food she consumed for each beat of her heart, or how many times she breathed per pound of clothing worn.