The Incubator Baby

by Ellis Parker Butler

Unfortunately, the nurse, Chiswick, objected. She threatened to leave. She said her professional training had not included card systems, and that even if she had had a modern business education, she had no time to keep such multitudinous records. Mr. Fielding promptly engaged a private secretary for Marjorie. Miss Vickers knew all about card index systems. She loved two things passionately—card systems and babies.

And then, just when a record card had been allotted to every function of Marjorie's pink and white body, a complication arose. Marjorie developed a will and a temper.

She decided that she had reached the age when she ought to sit alone. She looked upon the world and saw Chiswick sitting upright and Miss Vickers sitting upright and she longed to sit upright too. For six months she had reposed docilely upon her back or her stomach, with occasional variations of lying on one side or the other, and she felt that she had had enough of it. It was time to have a backbone and to take her place as a sitter. She told Chiswick so plainly enough. When Chiswick laid her on her back she yelled and raised her head. When Chiswick laid her on her stomach she turned over upon her back and raised her head and yelled. A little more and she would have been able to sit up without aid. Her head and her neck sat up—as far as they could. At least they flopped forward and tossed from side to side, but her backbone would not follow. It continued to repose in placid flatness on the pillow. Marjorie was very angry with her backbone. She got quite purple in the face about it at times, and choked.

Chiswick was very dense. Marjorie's head and neck explained again and again what they wanted to do, but Chiswick could not understand them. She did not appreciate that it was ambition—she thought it was colic. She pepperminted Marjorie until the sight of the peppermint spoon made Marjorie tremble with rage, and when Marjorie had absorbed ounces and ounces of peppermint water, Chiswick decided that Marjorie was past the colic age, anyway.

Miss Vickers discovered what Marjorie wanted.

“I believe,” she said, “that the child wants to sit up,” and then she tried it. That is why Marjorie loved Miss Vickers and hated Chiswick—and peppermint—from that day onward.

It would have all ended there if Marjorie had been willing to compromise, but she was not willing. The first day she might have been willing, but when a person has cried steadily for three days and has fought such a good fight, she feels it her right to dictate terms. She would not compromise on an angle of forty-five degrees. She refused to be satisfied with a plump, downy pillow at her back. She would sit upright and alone, or yell.

Not that it mattered that she sat upright and unsupported, except that she could not. Miss Vickers would seat her so and steady her for a moment, but when the protecting hands were removed Marjorie unfailingly collapsed. Sometimes she sank backward upon her pillow waving her arms impotently, but usually she doubled disgracefully forward until her nose bumped against her knee, or toppled to one side or the other like a pulpy fallen idol. Her backbone was irritatingly pliable—somewhat like a wet rag in stiffness. It was a poor affair, as backbones go. She might quite as well not have had any. It made Marjorie remarkably angry.

She spent three entire days in a continuous round of being set up and crumpling down again into the various bunchy shapes, and each day her temper grew more violent. For the first time in her life she cried real tears.

Mrs. Fielding was usually busy. Her club life was engrossing, but when, for three days in succession, the index cards bore the words “Cried all day,” she felt it her duty to investigate. She went to the nursery, indignant.