'Please,' she said. 'Take just a weeny bit more.'
The husband watched her over the top of his magazine. She was half dead with exhaustion, he could see that, and the pale oval face, usually so grave and serene, had taken on a kind of pinched and desperate look. But even so, the drop of her head as she gazed down at the child was curiously beautiful.
'You see,' she murmured. 'It's no good. She won't have it.'
She held the bottle up to the light, squinting at the calibrations.
'One ounce again. That's all she's taken. No - it isn't even that. It's only three-quarters. It's not enough to keep body and soul together, Albert, it really isn't. It worries me to death.'
'I know,' he said.
'If only they could find out what was wrong.'
'There's nothing wrong, Mabel. It's just a matter of time.'
'Of course there's something wrong.'
'Dr Robinson says no.'
'Look,' she said, standing up. 'You can't tell me it's natural for a six-weeks-old child to weigh less, less by more than two whole pounds than she did when she was born! Just look at those legs! They're nothing but skin and bone!'
The tiny baby lay limply on her arm, not moving.
'Dr Robinson said you was to stop worrying, Mabel. So did that other one.'
'Ha!' she said. 'Isn't that wonderful! I'm to stop worrying!'
'Now, Mabel.'
'What does he want me to do? Treat it as some sort of a joke?'
'He didn't say that.'
'I hate doctors! I hate them all!' she cried, and she swung away from him and walked quickly out of the room towards the stairs, carrying the baby with her.
Albert Taylor stayed where he was and let her go.
In a little while he heard her moving about in the bedroom directly over his head, quick nervous footsteps going tap tap tap on the linoleum above. Soon the footsteps would stop, and then he would have to get up and follow her, and when he went into the bedroom he would find her sitting beside the cot as usual, staring at the child and crying softly to herself and refusing to move.
'She's starving, Albert,' she would say.
'Of course she's not starving.'
'She is starving. I know she is. And Albert?'
'Yes?'
'I believe you know it too, but you won't admit it. Isn't that right?'
Every night now it was like this.
Last week they had taken the child back to the hospital, and the doctor had examined it carefully and told them that there was nothing the matter.
'It took us nine years to get this baby, Doctor,' Mabel had said. 'I think it would kill me if anything should happen to her.'
That was six days ago and since then it had lost another five ounces.
But worrying about it wasn't going to help anybody, Albert Taylor told himself. One simply had to trust the doctor on a thing like this. He picked up the magazine that was still lying on his lap and glanced idly down the list of contents to see what it had to offer this week: