The professor and his wife were horrified, but helpless. He went on in that way for a week. They simply could not keep track of him. He drank out of the horse-trough, dabbled in the puddles, consorted with pigs and chickens, shared his bread with the dogs and his milk with the cats, picked up crumbs from the dining-room sweepings, looked upon half rotten, muddy, and fly-specked apples found on the lawn as the greatest of prizes, and reveled in delight with old scraps of rags and hats and shoes which he, with the little country comrade under his leadership, resurrected from the most unlikely and unsanitary places.
The frightened and powerless parents read up again on the periods of incubation of all the microbes mentioned in the books. They could at least be ready with plans to meet whatever came, and cope with it at the earliest possible moment.
But it didn't come. At the end of two weeks nothing had happened. The child slept well and ate all he could get, and was in the best of spirits. At the end of three weeks he had gained four pounds. It was in direct and flagrant violation of all reason and all science, and thoroughly incomprehensible; but what could you do?
After much marvelling at the failure of science, however, they concluded to make a virtue of what was plainly a necessity, and gave the baby the freedom of the farm. And more than that; after a decent period of worrying, they too began to tread the primrose path, and let the little child lead them. They drank unsterilized milk and unboiled water, threw all precaution to the winds, rough-and-tumbled with the boys and dogs on the lawn, napped under the trees unprotected from flies and mosquitoes, ate apples with the skins and all, and without even washing them, went fishing in the creek a mile away up the marsh, and when overcome by blazing thirst drank of the water in the stream, played peg and got their mouths full of dirt, drew pictures for the children on the slate and erased them in the old familiar way—and did all the other reckless things they had done in their own childhood, when the microbe had not yet made a stir in the world, when delirium tremens was still the worst example of pathological misfortune, and nervous prostration had not yet spread to the masses.
When they returned to the city, clothed and in their right minds, they brought with them the half emptied medicine bottle, and charged smiling Dr. Goodenough with duplicity. He charged them—
Well, we shall not say what he charged them. Whatever it was, they engaged him for the next baby, and were grateful to him ever afterward. And as for microbes, before having to do with them in the future, they resolved to let them come at least half way.