consult a famous “child-specialist”--at five dollars per consultation;
she had received the dreadful tidings that Cedric was threatened with
the “rickets”. So she had come out to the country with one mighty
purpose in her soul. “Under-nourishment”, the doctor had said; and he
had laid out a regular schedule. Six times daily the unhappy infant
was to be fed; and each time some elaborate concoction had to be got
ready--practically nothing could be eaten in a state of nature. The
first meal would consist of, say a poached egg on a piece of toast, and
the juice of an orange, with the seeds carefully excluded; the next of
some chicken broth with a cracker or two, and the pulp of prunes with
the skins removed; the next of some beef chopped up and pounded to a
pulp and broiled, together with a bit of mashed potato or some other
cooked vegetable; the next of some gruel, with cream and sugar, and some
more prunes.
And these operations, of course, took the greater part of Corydon’s day;
she would struggle at them until she was ready to drop, and when she had
to give up they would fall to Thyrsis. Some of them fell to him quite
frequently--for instance, the pounding of the meat. It had to have
all the fat and gristle carefully cut out; and there had to be a clean
board, and a clean hammer, both of which must be scraped and washed
afterwards; and whenever by any chance Corydon let the meat stay on
the fire a second too long, so that it got hard, the whole elaborate
operation had to be gone over again--was not the baby’s life at stake?
It was quite vain for him to protest as to the pains that Corydon took
to remove every tiniest fragment of the skin of a stewed prune. “Surely,
dearest,” he would argue, “the internal arrangements of a baby are not
so delicate as to be torn by a tiny bit of prune-skin!”
But to Corydon the internal arrangements of babies were mysterious
things--to be understood only by a child-specialist at five dollars per
visit. “He told me what to do,” she would say; “and I am going to do
it.”
So she would prepare the concoctions, and would sit and feed them to
the baby, spoonful by spoonful; and long after the little one had been
stuffed to the bursting-point, she would hold the spoon poised in front
of its mouth, making tentative passes, and seeking by some device to
cajole the mouth into opening and admitting one last morsel of the
precious nutriment. The child had a word of its own inventing, wherewith
it denoted things that were good to eat. “Hee, gubum, gubum!” he
would exclaim; and Corydon would hold the spoon and repeat “Gubum,
gubum,”--long after the baby had begun to sputter and gasp and make
plain that it was no longer “gubum”.
Also, under the instructions of the specialist, they made an attempt to
break the child of the “hoodaloo mungie” habit. A baby should lie down
and go to sleep without handling, the authority had declared; and now
that there was all outdoors for him to cry in, they resolved that he
should be taught. So they built up the fence about the crib, and laid
the baby in for his afternoon nap, and started to go away. And the baby
gave one look of perplexity and dismay, and then began to cry. By the
time they had got out of the tent he was screaming like a creature
possessed; and Corydon and Thyrsis sat outside and stared at each other
in wonder and alarm. When she could stand it no more, they went away to
a distance; but still the uproar went on. Now and then they would creep
back and peep in at the purple and choking infant; and then steal away
again, and discuss the phenomenon, and wish that the “child-specialist”
were there to advise them. Finally, when the crying had gone on for two
hours without a moment’s pause, they gave up, because they were afraid
the baby might cry itself into convulsions. And so the “hoodaloo mungie”
habit went on for some time yet.
Under the “stuffing regime” the infant at first thrived amazingly; he
became fat and rosy, and Corydon’s heart beat high with joy and pride.
But then came midsummer, and the hot season; and first of all a rash
broke out upon the precious body, and in spite of powders and ointments,
refused to go away. Later on came the “hives”, with which the baby was
spotted like the top of a pepper-crust. And then, as fate willed it,
the family of a woman who did some laundry for Corydon developed the
measles; and Corydon found it out too late--and so they were in for the
first of a long program of “children’s diseases”.
It was a siege that lasted for a month and more--a nightmare experience.
The child had to be kept in a dark place, under pain of losing its
eyesight; and when it was very hot in the tent, some one had to sit and
fan it. It could not sleep, but writhed and moaned, now screaming
in torment, now whimpering like a frightened cur--a sound that wrung
Thyrsis’ very heart. And oh, the sight of the little body--purple, a
mass of eruptions, and with beads of perspiration upon it! Corydon’s
mother came to help her through this ordeal, and would sit for hours
upon hours, rocking the wailing infant in her arms.