He reached for the tin of tobacco on the table beside him and began filling his pipe, still reading.
Royal jelly is a glandular secretion produced by the nurse bees to feed the larvae immediately they have hatched from the egg. The pharyngeal glands of bees produce this substance in much the same way as the mammary glands of vertebrates produce milk. The fact is of great biological interest because no other insects in the world are known to have evolved such a process.
All old stuff, he told himself, but for want of anything better to do, he continued to read.
Royal jelly is fed in concentrated form to all bee larvae for the first three days after hatching from the egg; but beyond that point, for all those who are destined to become drones or workers, this precious food is greatly diluted with honey and pollen. On the other hand, the larvae which are destined to become queens are fed throughout the whole of their larval period on a concentrated diet of pure royal jelly. Hence the name.
Above him, up in the bedroom, the noise of the footsteps had stopped altogether. The house was quiet. He struck a match and put it to his pipe.
Royal jelly must be a substance of tremendous nourishing power, for on this diet alone, the honey-bee larva increases in weight fifteen hundred times in five days.
That was probably about right, he thought, although for some reason it had never occurred to him to consider larval growth in terms of weight before.
This is as if a seven-and-a-half-pound baby should increase in that time to five tons.
Albert Taylor stopped and read that sentence again. He read it a third time.
This is as if a seven-and-a-half-pound baby "Mabel!" he cried, jumping up from his chair. "Mabel! Come here!"
He went out into the hall and stood at the foot of the stairs calling for her to come down.
There was no answer.
He ran up the stairs and switched on the light on the landing. The bedroom door was closed. He crossed the landing and opened it and stood in the doorway looking into the dark room. "Mabel," he said. "Come downstairs a moment, will you please? I've just had a bit of an idea. It's about the baby."
The light from the landing behind him cast a faint glow over the bed and he could see her dimly now, lying on her stomach with her face buried in the pillow and her arms up over her head. She was crying again.
"Mabel," he said, going over to her, touching her shoulder. "Please come down a moment. This may be important."
"Go away," she said. "Leave me alone."
"Don't you want to hear about my idea?"
"Oh, Albert, I'm tired," she sobbed. "I'm so tired I don't know what I'm doing any more. I don't think I can go on. I don't think I can stand it."
There was a pause. Albert Taylor turned away from her and walked slowly over to the cradle where the baby was lying, and peered in. It was too dark for him to see the child's face, but when he bent down close he could hear the sound of breathing, very faint and quick. "What time is the next feed?" he asked.
"Two o'clock, I suppose."
"And the one after that?"
"Six in the morning."
"I'll do them both," he said. "You go to sleep."
She didn't answer.
"You get properly into bed, Mabel, and go straight to sleep, you understand? And stop worrying. I'm taking over completely for the next twelve hours. You'll give yourself a nervous breakdown going on like this."
"Yes," she said. "I know."
"I'm taking the nipper and myself and the alarm clock into the spare room this very moment, so you just lie down and relax and forget all about us. Right?" Already he was pushing the cradle out through the door.
"Oh, Albert," she sobbed.
"Don't you worry about a thing. Leave it to me."
"Albert "Yes?"
"I love you, Albert."
"I love you too, Mabel. Now go to sleep."
Albert Taylor didn't see his wife again until nearly eleven o'clock the next morning.
"Good gracious me!" she cried, rushing down the stairs in dressing-gown and slippers. "Albert! Just look at the time! I must have slept twelve hours at least! Is everything all right? What happened?"
He was sitting quietly in his armchair, smoking a pipe and reading the morning paper. The baby was in a sort of carry-cot on the floor at his feet, sleeping.
"Hullo, dear," he said, smiling.
She ran over to the cot and looked in. "Did she take anything, Albert? How many times have you fed her? She was due for another one at ten o'clock, did you know that?
Albert Taylor folded the newspaper neatly into a square and put it away on the side table. "I fed her at two in the morning," he said, "and she took about half an ounce, no more. I fed her again at six and she did a bit better that time, two ounces… "
"Two ounces! Oh, Albert, that's marvellous!"
"And we just finished the last feed ten minutes ago. There's the bottle on the mantelpiece. Only one ounce left. She drank three. How's that?" He was grinning proudly, delighted with his achievement.
The woman quickly got down on her knees and peered at the baby.
"Don't she look better?" he asked eagerly. "Don't she look fatter in the face?"
"It may sound silly," the wife said, "but I actually think she does. Oh, Albert, you're a marvel! How did you do it?"
"She's turning the corner," he said. "That's all it is. Just like the doctor prophesied, she's turning the corner."
"I pray to God you're right, Albert."
"Of course I'm right. From now on, you watch her go."
The woman was gazing lovingly at the baby.
"You look a lot better yourself too, Mabel."
"I feel wonderful. I'm sorry about last night."
"Let's keep it this way," he said. "I'll do all the night feeds in future. You do the day ones."
She looked up at him across the cot, frowning. "No," she said. "Oh no, I wouldn't allow you to do that."
"I don't want you to have a breakdown, Mabel."
"I won't, not now I've had some sleep."
"Much better we share it."
"No, Albert. This is my job and I intend to do it. Last night won't happen again."
There was a pause. Albert Taylor took the pipe out of his mouth and examined the grain on the bowl. "All right," he said. "In that case I'll just relieve you of the donkey work, I'll do all the sterilizing and the mixing of the food and getting everything ready. That'll help you a bit, anyway."
She looked at him carefully, wondering what could have come over him all of a sudden.
"You see, Mabel, I've been thinking "Yes, dear."
"I've been thinking that up until last night I've never even raised a finger to help you with this baby."
"That isn't true."
"Oh yes it is. So I've decided that from now on I'm going to do my share of the work. I'm going to be the feed-mixer and the bottle-sterilizer. Right?"
"It's very sweet of you, dear, but I really don't think it's necessary… "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.