little corner cupboard. In a moment she was back with a small bottle
and a bit of antiseptic cotton. "We always sterilize our lips now before
we kiss him--it's so much safer, you know."

Aunt Hannah sat down limply, the baby still in her arms.

"Fiddlededee, Billy! What an absurd idea! What have you got in that
bottle?"

"Why, Aunt Hannah, it's just a little simple listerine," bridled Billy,
"and it isn't absurd at all. It's very sensible. My 'Hygienic Guide for
Mothers' says--"

"Well, I suppose I may kiss his hand," interposed Aunt Hannah, just a
little curtly, "without subjecting myself to a City Hospital treatment!"

Billy laughed shamefacedly, but she still held her ground.

"No, you can't--nor even his foot. He might get them in his mouth. Aunt
Hannah, why does a baby think that everything, from his own toes to his
father's watch fob and the plush balls on a caller's wrist-bag, is made
to eat? As if I could sterilize everything, and keep him from getting
hold of germs somewhere!"

"You'll have to have a germ-proof room for him," laughed Alice Greggory,
playfully snapping her fingers at the baby in Aunt Hannah's lap.

Billy turned eagerly.

"Oh, did you read about that, too?" she cried. "I thought it was _so_
interesting, and I wondered if I could do it."

Alice stared frankly.

"You don't mean to say they actually _have_ such things," she
challenged.

"Well, I read about them in a magazine," asserted Billy, "--how you
could have a germ-proof room. They said it was very simple, too. Just
pasteurize the air, you know, by heating it to one hundred and ten
and one-half degrees Fahrenheit for seventeen and one-half minutes. I
remember just the figures."

"Simple, indeed! It sounds so," scoffed Aunt Hannah, with uplifted
eyebrows.

"Oh, well, I couldn't do it, of course," admitted Billy, regretfully.
"Bertram never'd stand for that in the world. He's always rushing in to
show the baby off to every Tom, Dick and Harry and his wife that comes;
and of course if you opened the nursery door, that would let in those
germ things, and you _couldn't_ very well pasteurize your callers by
heating them to one hundred and ten and one-half degrees for seventeen
and one-half minutes! I don't see how you could manage such a room,
anyway, unless you had a system of--of rooms like locks, same as they do
for water in canals."

"Oh, my grief and conscience--locks, indeed!" almost groaned Aunt
Hannah. "Here, Alice, will