The Doings of David and Peter

VIII  MICHAEL IS APPROVED

He was a gay baby, was Michael. It hardly seemed any time before his mouth was struggling with the makings of a smile, a queer, wide open, wobbly effort which yet had all the elements of mirth in it. Solenniy, David and Peter hung over him, examining his efforts critically. 

"He did try to smile,” said David, generously giving credit for a poor attempt, but Peter was more blunt.

"Why does he open his mouth so wider" he asked. “It doesn't look much like a smile."

But Michael persevered, and a few weeks later there was no doubt as to the reality of the broad grin that illumined his face. A quaint, funny little person he was, with a big bald head, with David's great blue enquiring eyes and questioning brow, and an urchin grin that was part Peter but mostly himself. So quickly he seemed to pass from that first floppy stage when, as Peter put it, he was not yet a “proper baby". 

"Proper babies cry," he explained, “and our baby only says ‘Wa-wa!' When will he be a proper baby?" 

Those helpless hands, too, which failed to grasp the red engine so kindly offered for his inspection, were difficult to understand. But Peter was philosophical about it. 

"Specs he'll be a proper baby soon,” he said, "when he’s four like me he'll be able to play with engines." 

Michael, as if knowing all that was expected of him, did his level best to become a proper baby. He fed till he fattened visibly, till his bald head turned brown, and, in his waking moments, his bright eyes and smiling mouth seemed to say: 

“Only wait a bit. I'm growing up as fast as I can." 

There is such a wide gap between the baby of a few weeks old and the school-boy, that the attitude of David and Peter to the newcomer was almost fatherly. David's passion for organizing made him 0.C. Bath at once, and, after once watching Michael's toilet, he was able to arrange everything in perfect order. He did, in fact, control operations to such an extent that no second thoughts were possible, powders and creams once used being re-covered and returned to their proper places well out of reach. 

Michael's strange method of feeding seemed to both boys little short of miraculous, and, though they nobly tried to obey their mother's edict that baby must have quiet for his féed-time, they found it hard to  tear themselves away. Round-eyed and solemn, Peter would stand, hands deep in pockets, staring intently, and at last deliver himself of some deep pronouncement: 

"It is funny how baby has his dinner!” or, "Doesn't he have anything 'cept milk?" 

David, squirming on and off furniture, trying vainly not to kick or bump things, was one palpitating question-mark. How? What? Why? 

Useless to cajole them out of the room - they were soon back again. If the meal was over, there was always the possibility that Michael might trickle some out again, and "mess" was such fun. Michael  seemed to think so too. With his broadest grin, he would lean back and let the overflow dribble peacefully down his clothes, amid shouts of hilarity from his brothers. 

“Look!” cried David, "he's making a mess all down his frock and on the floor." 

"Oo!" cried Peter joyfully. “Isn't he a messy baby? Perhaps he'll do it again" In Peter's eyes this “messiness" was all to Michael's credit.

 "He is a messy baby,” Peter would say, with intense pride, when ‘ his small brother's conduct had been far from polite. "He's the messiest baby of all, isn't he? Messier ‘an I was when I was a tiny baby." 

“But I was the first," claimed David, not to be outdones "l waa the eldest ‘cos I came first."

"I was the fattest, though," declared Peter, and all having some claim to notoriety, the matter was satisfactorily settled. 

The other peculiarity of Micheel's which appealed to Peter was the warmth of his head. Laying a fat, firm palm on the baby's helpless skull, he would exclaim, in daily surprise: 

"Hasn't he got a hot head? Isn't it funny that he's got such a hot head?”

When baby squirmed or protested under the pressure, he remained unconcerned. While he was conducting an investigation into the temperature of babies’ heads, the feelings of the subject were beside the point. He might occasionally remark, with the detachment of a scientist observing the reactions of a mouse: 

"He jerked his head when I touched it," but Michael's jerking wes no adequate reason for removing the firm palm. This same detached attitude characterised his assistance at Michael's toilet. 

“Could I help undress him?" he asked, one the evening. 

"You  could help undo his strings ,“ was the answer,  and the strings were untied in  the manner of a seaman hauling one rope. But this was not enough for Peter.

 "Now," he announced, “we have to get his arms out of their sleeves," and, grasping a sleeve in one hand, a minute arm in the other,  he began a determined effort to part them. It seemed desirable at this point to provide a distraction, during which the frock could be removed with a little more consideration for the feelings of Michael.