The Incubator Baby Page 2

whenever she was not hungry nor sleepy, and whatever anickel-plated incubator may be able to do, it is not an adept atkissing. It may exude balmy temperature better than an old-style openfireplace, but it is a failure at wrapping its warm, soft arms arounda baby, and pressing its cheek against a tiny, satin cheek. The verycast-ironness of its construction prevents it from lifting theinfant high in the air until coos and crows of baby laughter tell ofunsystematic, unscientific joy. So Marjorie adopted the fly.

  The fly came one day and alighted on the glass door of her crystal caseand winked its wings at her, and she blinked her eyes at it, and afterthat they understood each other perfectly. It knew she wanted to beamused, and it knew it was an amusing fellow. It had a clever trick ofshaking hands with itself under its coat tails, and as long as she knewit, it never mentioned a statistic, and altho it walked all over thethermostat, it disdained to look at the figures. Marjorie and the flybecame good friends. There was something very human about the fly, farmore than about the constantly passing faces of the sightseers, orthe prim, statistical nurse, or even the systematic, broadened Mrs.Fielding, and one day it slipped into the incubator and alighted onMarjorie's lips, and kissed her. Shortly after the scandalized nurseassassinated the fly, and Marjorie would have mourned deeply but for anew companion she discovered a little while afterward.

  It was shortly before she was sufficiently incubated to leave her glassprison, and she was fine and plump, and had begun to roll over and bumpher head against the glass, surprising herself greatly, for she couldnot see the glass. If she had stayed a little longer she would have beenafraid to move at all, for wherever there was nothing to be seen theremight be that hard, smooth wall that hurt her.

  She was lying flat on her downy pillow one morning, watching the faces,when something stirred at the foot of the pillow. She raised her head avery little but could see nothing, but as soon as her head fell back thething moved again. She was sure it moved, and she waited quietly, andagain it moved. This time there seemed to be two of the things. It waspuzzling, for the nurse never allowed anything interesting inside thecase.

  Marjorie lay low, and presently, up, up, into her range of vision crepta little pink and white affair with five short, plump branches, and justbehind it arose another. She cooed with pleasure.

  The things seemed quite tame and unafraid, and they came nearer untilthey stood quite upright on plump white branches. Marjorie reachedout her dimpled hands, which wandered a little uncertainly in the air,wavering to and fro, until one came in contact with one of the plump,mysterious things. She grasped it firmly, and it was soft and pleasantto the touch.

  The crowd of faces paused and increased in number. They seemed greatlyinterested as she tried to catch the thing, and one old man offeredto bet she would catch it. He was immensely tickled when she did andgrinned delightedly. Marjorie held fast to her captive.

  She pondered what she should do with it, and finally decided that itmust be edible. She drew it closer to her face, and it resisted andtugged to get away, but she dragged it on relentlessly.

  It was a hard fight. The old man coached her, cheering her on to freshendeavors, and, thus encouraged, she made one great final effort andpulled the soft pink thing into her lips, and the old man laughed longand loud and wiped his eyes.

  "Look at her!" he cried. "Just look at her! Ain't she a picter for you?I knowed she'd get it, she's grit clean through." A small boy, excitedby the size of the crowd, pushed his way to the front and looked, andthen turned away, indignant. "Huh!" he exclaimed scornfully, "'tain'tnut'in' but a kid got its toe in its mout'!" During her last days in theincubator Marjorie and her feet became fast friends. All the long periodof her loneliness was forgotten in this new companionship. Never werethere more accommodating playmates than those two gentle twins, for theyseemed to be twins, they were so much alike in size and appearance. Theynever forced themselves forward. When Marjorie wanted to sleep the feetlay quietly at the foot of the pillow, but the moment she felt likeplaying they crept upward and stood enticingly in her sight. Sometimesshe played with one, and sometimes with the other, and whichever was notneeded curled up snugly out of sight and waited patiently until it wasneeded.

  They had glorious times together. Usually she had no trouble in catchinga foot when she wanted it, but sometimes they played a little game withher, and dodged about just beyond her reach, coaxing her to catch them,and eluding her hands by the smallest part of an inch, but this onlymade the fun more riotous, and one of them always ended the game byletting itself be captured.

  But one day a wonderful thing happened to Marjorie. The nurse and themanager came to Marjorie's incubator, and consulted the chart, andweighed Marjorie and pinched her arms and legs to see whether they werefirm and solid, and after that the air in the incubator lost a littleof its warmth every day, until it was as cool as the air of the greatoutside world.

  Marjorie was playing the foot game when the end came. She had not theleast idea that anything of the sort was going to happen. No one thoughtof consulting her convenience in the matter.

  First her father and mother appeared, and she might have known thatsomething unusual was on foot if she had thought about it, for theyhad never before visited Marjorie simultaneously, but Marjorie was toodeeply in the foot game to pay attention to parents. Parents were anecessity, but the foot game was a joy.

  The nurse, who often did unaccountable things to Marjorie, did the mostunaccountable of all. She took Marjorie from her bed on the soft, pillowand dressed her in stiff new garments, and enfolded her in blankets andcapes until she was like a bundle of soft cloths, with only a littlepeephole for her eyes, and then, with cruelty unthought of, she handedher bodily to Mrs. Fielding. Marjorie objected. She foresaw some trickin all this. She raised her voice and protested, but they covered herface with a soft white veil. Marjorie indignantly went to....

  When she awoke the world had changed. She was in a strange foreign land,where the walls were of white and blue tiles, and the ceiling was white,and the floor was covered with soft rugs. It may have been beautiful butit was not home. There was no incubator.

  There were charts and sterilizers and scales and thermometers andeverything necessary for a highly systematized and scientific nursery,but there was no incubator, and there was no long line of impertinent,curious faces, constantly passing and constantly changing. Marjorie washomesick.

  Mrs. Fielding made the first entry on a brand-new chart, with triumphantsatisfaction. She epitomized Marjorie in an array of dates and figures.To Mrs. Fielding and Chiswick, the new nurse, all was well so long asthe chart was normal. When the figures on the chart were abnormal theyconsidered that the baby in the crib had transgressed the laws of systemand science, and they paid her little attentions in the way of smallpowders administered in a teaspoon.

  Marjorie missed the nickel-plated trimmings of her incubator and shelonged to see the procession of faces that she had seen so often. Shewould have given two degrees of temperature and three respirationsjust to have a fat, greasy East Side washlady beam upon her as in theincubator days. Even the occasional visits of her father became a joy.She hoped he would be sufficiently weak-minded to take her in his arms,but he was afraid to do anything that might affect the beautifullycorrect procession of figures on the chart. She tried to soften Chiswickwith smiles, and betray her father with gurgles, and she even attemptedto astonish her mother by assuming a high temperature and a low pulse,but all she got was a disreputable chart record and a dose of whitepowder.

  She lay back and puckered up her chin and yelled a good, healthy babyyell. Chiswick entered it on the chart. She added a disparaging remarkto the effect that the cry was for "no apparent reason." It was aninsult, and Marjorie considered it one.

  Where were the pink and white playfellows? A ripple shook the white ofher lace-decked skirt; two lumps arose in it; they pushed upward higherand higher until the skirt slid back, and peeping over its edge came tenrosy toes that twinkled at her mischievously. Marjorie held out her handappealingl
y, and the two plump feet, that had not dared to venture intothe 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.