They’d come to a tentative truce the autumn before. It had already held longer than Menedemos had expected. He said, “I’m glad you’re not squabbling anymore.” That gave him another excuse to smile at Baukis. It gave her another excuse to smile back. And no one who saw them or listened to them could have noted anything out of the ordinary.

Sostratos held his nephew with exaggerated care, as if afraid Polydoros were about to leap from his arms and precipitate himself headfirst onto the dirt of the courtyard at Damonax’s house. For all his care, both Erinna and a wet nurse hovered close by, ready to snatch the baby out of his inexperienced hands.

Trying to reassure them that he had some idea what he was doing, he said, “He sure looks a lot better than he did right after he was born.”

His sister scowled. “What was wrong with him right after he was born?” she demanded in irate tones.

“He looked just fine, I’ll have you know,” the wet nurse added.

“All right. All right. Fine. I didn’t mean anything by it,” Sostratos said hastily. The women relaxed. Sostratos looked down at Polydoros. The baby was a healthy pink now, not the reddish-purple color he’d been. His head had been almost cone-shaped. It was much rounder now, and getting more so each time Sostratos saw him. Even his expression seemed more alert, less confused, than it had when he first came into the world.

Some things hadn’t changed, though. Sostratos suddenly realized the cloths around the baby’s middle were moist. He thrust Polydoros at the wet nurse and wiped his hands on his chiton.

“There, there,” the woman told the baby. “We’ll take care of that. Don’t you worry about a thing.” She carried him away.

When she came back, she sat down on a bench, slipped her chiton down from one shoulder, and gave Polydoros her breast. Sostratos watched the baby suck, as interested in the process as he was in the bare breast. He also listened to his nephew nursing; he hadn’t realized it could be so noisy. He could hear every gulp Polydoros took. Then the baby swallowed wrong and choked. The wet nurse took him away from the breast and held him up against her shoulder, patting him on the back till he belched: a surprisingly large, surprisingly deep sound. Then she brought him down and let him nurse some more.