'Come on!' he cried. 'Don't change the luck! I done it the last three times and just look what happened! When's the next one? Two o'clock, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'It's all mixed,' he said. 'Everything's all mixed and ready and all you've got to do when the time comes is to go out there to the larder and take it off the shelf and warm it up. That's some help, isn't it?'
The woman got up off her knees and went over to him and kissed him on the cheek. 'You're such a nice man,' she said. 'I love you more and more every day I know you.'
Later, in the middle of the afternoon, when Albert was outside in the sunshine working among the hives, he heard her calling to him from the house.
'Albert!' she shouted. 'Albert, come here!' She was running through the buttercups towards him.
He started forward to meet her, wondering what was wrong.
'Oh, Albert! Guess what!'
'What?'
'I've just finished giving her the two-o'clock feed and she's taken the whole lot!'
'No!'
'Every drop of it! Oh, Albert, I'm so happy! She's going to be all right! She's turned the corner just like you said!' She came up to him and threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, and he clapped her on the back and laughed and said what a marvellous little mother she was.
'Will you come in and watch the next one and see if she does it again, Albert?'
He told her he wouldn't miss it for anything, and she hugged him again, then turned and ran back to the house, skipping over the grass and singing all the way.
Naturally, there was a certain amount of suspense in the air as the time approached for the six-o'clock feed. By five thirty both parents were already seated in the living-room waiting for the moment to arrive. The bottle with the milk formula in it was standing in a saucepan of warm water on the mantelpiece. The baby was asleep in its carry-cot on the sofa.
At twenty minutes to six it woke up and started screaming its head off.
'There you are!' Mrs Taylor cried. 'She's asking for the bottle. Pick her up quick, Albert, and hand her to me here. Give me the bottle first.'
He gave her the bottle, then placed the
baby on the woman's lap. Cautiously, she touched the baby's lips with the end of the nipple. The baby seized the nipple between its gums and began to suck ravenously with a rapid powerful action.
'Oh, Albert, isn't it wonderful?' she said, laughing.
'It's terrific, Mabel.'
In seven or eight minutes, the entire contents of the bottle had disappeared down the baby's throat.
'You clever girl,' Mrs Taylor said. 'Four ounces again.'
Albert Taylor was leaning forward in his chair, peering intently into the baby's face. 'You know what?' he said. 'She even seems as though she's put on a touch of weight already. What do you think?'
The mother looked down at the child.
'Don't she seem bigger and fatter to you, Mabel, than she was yesterday?'
'Maybe she does, Albert. I'm not sure. Although actually there couldn't be any real gain in such a short time as this. The important thing is that she's eating normally.'
'She's turned the corner,' Albert said. 'I don't think you need worry about her any more.'
'I certainly won't.'
'You want me to go up and fetch the cradle back into our own bedroom, Mabel?'