Belles on Their Toes

by Frank B. Gilbreth

  The two boys, who had enjoyed themselves as much as Tom, promised they’d be good.

  “Don’t say nothing to the girls,” Tom warned. “I think Martha would take it all right. But the Doochess would say it hurt her social standin’.”

  The boys got home in the afternoons ahead of the high school girls, and thus could get away without being noticed. It took a good deal longer the second day to fill the box, because they were covering the same territory. On subsequent days, they were forced to go farther and farther away from home. But the pile behind the fence grew steadily. And even after they knew the pile was high enough, they found excuses to go after more.

  “We might need some for next year,” Tom pointed out. “And every year there is fewer horses.”

  They soon found out which were the most productive streets, and how many days they should allow to elapse before going back over a street. Sometimes there’d be an argument about whether it would pay to go around a certain block, and the person who had advocated the detour would either crow or eat crow, depending on the pickings.

  “Maybe we did go up there yesterday,” Tom would say. “But I see sparrers. And where sparrers is, is what we’re looking for.”

  Tom was invariably right in selecting the streets. He may have had some sort of sixth sense. Or, as Frank and Bill suspected, he may have cased the neighborhood during the morning, while they were in school, so as to impress them with his infallibility. At any rate, he swore he saw birds when neither of them did, and he could predict with exactness what would be found around a curve in the street.

  The sport—because that’s what they considered it—might have continued for weeks, if they hadn’t bumped into Ernestine. They had carefully avoided the streets she and Martha took coming home from school. But on that particular afternoon, Ernestine had been given a ride part of the way home, and was off her accustomed path. She was walking with a fellow.

  The boys and Tom didn’t see her approaching. Bill had maneuvered the express wagon into position, and Tom and Frank were shoveling.

  “Henc, henc,” Tom was chuckling. “I tole you I seen sparrers. You can’t fool old eagle eye. This is always a good place. This is an every day street from now on.”

  “That’s eleven for Tom, and only five for us,” Bill said enviously. “He can spot it a mile away.”

  “I’m the champeen,” Tom crowed. “Ain’t no doubt about that. It’s the biggest one today, too. Those little ones of yours we might as well of throwed back.”

  He looked up then and saw Ernestine.

  “Duck,” he warned, squatting behind the cart, “or she’ll have us beheadet when she gets us back to the palace.”

  Ernestine’s friend was intent in a conversation. Frank and Bill had never seen him before, and he wasn’t paying any attention to them. Ernestine had seen them and was watching them out of the corner of her eye. She was blushing and furious. She held her head high, and she tried to make believe she was listening to every word of the conversation.

  Frank and Bill turned their backs, because they didn’t want to embarrass her any more than they already had. Tom, peeking guiltily from behind the cart, started mumbling about how the robbers at the seed store wanted to charge $12.

  Ernestine passed, without her friend’s being aware that she knew them. But as she walked down the street, she didn’t feel right about it. No matter what they were doing, they were kith and kin. It was a cheap thing to pretend not to know them. And, after all, they were out collecting what they were collecting to save the family money.

  “Just a second,” she told her friend. “Wait up.”

  She turned and walked back to the wagon, and looked into it.

  “Hello, Frank,” she said loudly. “Hello, Bill. Hello, Tom.”

  They said hello, Ernestine.

  “That’s a fine load,” she told them. “I think you’d better take it home, now.”

  They said they were glad she liked it, and that they were headed home.

  Ernestine rejoined her friend, who hadn’t seemed to be paying much attention.

  “They’re my brothers,” she said defensively. “At least the two boys are. We’re going to have a vegetable garden.”

  “That stuff will make it grow,” he nodded. “We use it on our lawn.”

  “It sure will,” Ernestine agreed.

  “It’s much better than the commercial kind.”

  “It sure is,” she nodded.

  “You might tell them we passed some of it back there a ways. Didn’t you notice?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Ernestine. “Anyway, they’ve got plenty of it already.”

  “It seems a shame to miss it. It gets more expensive every year.”

  Ernestine and her friend continued down the street. She wondered how romance was supposed to flourish for any member of a family with so many younger brothers. She wondered why, with all the topics of conversation in the world to choose from, they had to end up on that one.

  BEFORE MOTHER CAME HOME from the hospital, Ernestine warned the boys not to mention how they got the fertilizer. She thought Mother had enough on her mind without worrying about the fact that almost every one of her friends in town must have seen Frank and Bill making the rounds with their cart.

  But the soil did look fine and rich, and it was one of the first things Mother noticed.

  “Where in the world did you get that lovely fertilizer?” she asked. “I didn’t see any check stub made out for that.”

  “It’s a long story,” said Ernestine. “It seems that Tom has certain friends.”

  “I guess you’d better not tell me,” Mother smiled. “I have an idea it’s one of those things that the less I know about, the better I’ll feel.”

  “Have you ever heard of Pegasus?” Ernestine asked brightly. “Well, once upon a time …”

  “Never mind, dear,” Mother interrupted. “I saw the box on the express wagon.”

  “It won’t happen again,” Ernestine promised. “And you ought to see all that’s left over, out by the back fence.”

  Mother thought the garden was a wonderful idea. The seeds started to come up before long. The jobs of weeding and cultivating were added by Ernestine and Martha to our work assignment charts, and we were fairly faithful about them.

  We may not have got best results because, as the agriculture bulletins pointed out, manure is supposed to be aged before it is applied as fertilizer. But we did, at least, get good results. There were corn, beans, peas, carrots, tomatoes, beets, kale, and lettuce. The girls canned some of them for winter use.

  Later we got a dozen hens, and that cut expenses some more, and helped solve the fertilization problem for future years. Fred and Dan thought it would solve the problem altogether if we should buy a pony, but the older ones reluctantly vetoed that idea.

  Tom named and made pets of the hens, and they’d follow him around the yard and jump up and perch on his finger. When their laying lagged, he’d make a show of spiking their mash with Quinine Remedy. The results after such dosings were spectacular. The poultry bulletins, which we also had written for, said the most you could expect from a dozen hens was eight or ten eggs a day. Sometimes we’d find twenty-five or thirty eggs in the nests when we got home from school.

  Sometimes, too, we’d see empty, store-bought egg containers poking out from under old newspapers in the kitchen wastebasket. We didn’t want to spoil Tom’s joke. When he wasn’t looking, we pushed them down out of sight.

  16. Then There Were Ten

  ANNE FELL IN LOVE with a doctor at the University of Michigan and this time it was the real thing. She wrote Mother that she had an engagement ring, and that her fiancé expected to go into practice soon. He was a few years older than she. He had to work pretty hard, and she didn’t have a chance to see as much of him as either of them would like.

  Anne didn’t say so, but she wasn’t interested in college any more. She was interested only in getting married. But she felt she had obligations to t
he family, and she didn’t want to do anything that would upset Mother.

  She was moody and nervous when she returned home for spring vacation. She spent a good deal of time in her room, writing special delivery letters. And she didn’t look up any of her friends in Montclair.

  Mother’s nose had turned out as handsomely as she had predicted, and she was back, full-time, on the grindstone again. But now she was concerned about Anne, who didn’t seem to want to confide in anyone.

  “I know what it’s like,” Mother said one night, dropping down beside Anne on her bed. “Goodness knows I went through the same thing when I was engaged to your father. I was in California and he was three thousand miles away in Boston.”

  “No one knows what it’s like,” Anne said hopelessly. “Nothing was keeping you from getting married.”

  “Well, I was some older than you,” Mother admitted. “I had already graduated from college. But you’ve only got a little more than a year to go.”

  “We’d like to get married right away,” Anne whispered. She threw her arms around Mother. “Oh, Mother, what am I going to do?”

  “It’ll work out all right,” Mother promised.

  “It sounds selfish, I know that,” Anne said. “But that’s what we’d like—to get married right away.”

  “It doesn’t sound selfish at all,” Mother told her. “It sounds like the most natural thing in the world. If you didn’t feel that way, I’d know you’d picked the wrong man. But I think it would be better for you to wait a while, dear.”

  “I know it,” Anne burst into tears. “I know you’ll need me here to help run the house until the younger children are grown.”

  “Lie down, dear, and let me rub your back.”

  “I know it, and he knows it,” Anne sobbed. “We know it’s out of the question.”

  “Why the children won’t be grown for fifteen years,” Mother said. “You don’t think I mean for you to wait that long! I don’t need you to help run the house. I just want you to wait until you finish college.”

  “But it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be.”

  “Of course it would be right. Ernestine helps run the house now, just as well as you used to. And Martha will do just as well as either of you—even better, I suspect—when Ernestine goes off to Smith this autumn.”

  “Go ahead and rub,” said Anne, lying on her stomach and drying her eyes on the pillowcase.

  “You don’t think I want a bunch of spinsters around the house, scolding me because the dusting isn’t done properly, do you?” Mother asked, rubbing.

  “You really don’t?”

  “And you don’t think I want to support you forever, do you?” Mother teased.

  “Well, naturally, I thought you’d want me to get a job.”

  “If you had a job, you wouldn’t be any help running the house,” said Mother, emphasizing her logic by slapping her where she sat down. “Why I’ll be tickled to death to get rid of you.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” Anne sighed. “I honestly wouldn’t.”

  “But I do think it would be best to wait until you graduate. Just to set an example to the other children, for one thing.”

  Anne said that waiting a year wouldn’t be anything. It was waiting fifteen, that had her worried.

  “I wouldn’t even ask you to wait that long, but you know how much your father wanted all of you to finish college,” Mother explained. “I guess it’s something I promised myself I’d do for him.”

  “And you’re sure you’re not going to need me at home?”

  “It’s a mistake ever to think of yourself as indispensable,” said Mother, rubbing, and then slapping her in the same place again. “Why don’t you telephone him and ask him if he can’t spend the rest of the holidays with us. We’d all like to meet him.”

  Anne leaped from the bed. “I sure will,” she shouted. “Why he’ll pack up in a minute and … Wait a minute. You’re not trying to give him the Al Lynch treatment, are you?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Not unless he brings a ukulele.”

  “He’s not like that. You’ll see.”

  WE CALLED HIM DOCTOR BOB, to distinguish him from our own Bob. We couldn’t decide whether we liked him or not, at first, because he was quiet until you got to know him. He had a conservative black Ford coupe, with Michigan license plates, and he dressed like a businessman rather than a college boy.

  Frank and Bill had moved out of their room again, and doubled up with Fred and Dan. When Doctor Bob found out about that, he made Frank move back with him.

  “For the last ten years I’ve been living in fraternity houses and hospitals,” he said. “I wouldn’t feel at home in a room all by my self. And there’s no need for you four to be crowded up like that.”

  The bathtub maneuver, with Frank masquerading as a girl, had worked so well on Al that the boys had considered trying it on Doctor Bob. But after he relieved the congestion in Fred’s and Dan’s room, they decided to drop the whole idea.

  “It wouldn’t work on him anyway,” Bill explained. “If anyone walked in on him, he wouldn’t mind. He’d probably say, ‘Hi, Sis,’ and go right on washing.”

  Tom stood in some awe of Anne’s fiancé, since he was a doctor, although a young one. But the awe was not sufficient to prevent Tom from giving him a piece of his mind one night, when he found Doctor Bob sitting on his kitchen table.

  Tom was particular about the table. It was his office, and it symbolized something that was exclusively his. He ate off it, kept his tools on it, and maintained a bed for Fourteen under it. Although Tom often cleaned chickens and skinned squirrels on his table, none of us was allowed to place anything unsanitary upon it, particularly ourselves.

  Anne was preparing a midnight meal after the movies, and Doctor Bob was watching from the table, when Tom came down from his room to get a pitcher of ice water.

  “My table,” Tom gasped. “Get your hiney offen there.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to him, Bob,” Anne blushed. “He does that to everybody.”

  “I have to eat my food offen there, you know,” Tom screamed.

  “You’re not dealing with children any more,” Anne told him furiously. “You go back to your room and be quiet.”

  “I quit,” Tom shouted, reaching behind him in a familiar gesture to untie his apron, but finding only the rear of his bathrobe. “Let your Mother find someone else to do all the dirty work around here.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Doctor Bob, sliding off the table, “I’ll sit in a chair. There’s nothing to get excited about.”

  Tom seized a dishrag and a bar of soap, and scrubbed the table officiously.

  “I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t eat offen here,” he kept mumbling. “It’s bad enough having members of the immejate family sitting on it.”

  “I don’t blame you,” sympathized Doctor Bob, who had heard from Anne about Tom’s ideas concerning his own illnesses. “A man who’s been through what you’ve been through can’t be too careful about germs.”

  “That’s right,” Tom agreed, somewhat mollified. “But nobody around here don’t consider that. How did you know?”

  “Come over here in the light.” Doctor Bob spread open one of Tom’s eyes and peered into it. “Now open your mouth and say ‘ah.’”

  Tom opened his mouth and said it.

  “Clear history of pleurisy. You’re in good shape now, but watch the germs. If you ever feel an attack coming on, there’s an old medicine on the market that’s better than any of the new things. It’s called …”

  “Quinine Remedy,” Tom beamed.

  Doctor Bob nodded sagely.

  “Yes, sir,” said Tom, sucking in his stomach, and spreading newspapers over his table. “You can sit up here, now, Doctor, if it’s more comfortable.”

  “I’m all right, here in the chair.”

  “Come on, sir,” Tom begged. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Doctor Bob climbed back on the table.
/>   “For Pete’s sake,” Anne said incredulously. “You’re the first one he’s let do that since Dad died.”

  “I don’t mind when there’s papers on the table,” Tom explained patiently. “I used to spread out papers for your father, too. I got to eat offen there, you know.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” Doctor Bob agreed.

  BY THE SECOND DAY of Doctor Bob’s visit, all of us had decided we wanted him as a member of the family. So much so that we began to take precautions to make certain Anne wouldn’t lose him.

  Frank, Bill, and Fred drew up a schedule and stood watch in the mornings, so that no one would make any noise and awaken Doctor Bob. Frank had the duty on the second floor, Bill on the first, and Fred outside his window. Tom fixed special desserts for him, and was always sending milk and sandwiches up to his room.

  Some mornings, when he was up before Anne, Doctor Bob would play baseball with the boys or take the girls riding in his car.

  “Are you sure you’re having a good time?” we’d ask him. “Would you like us to call Anne, now? She’s slept long enough. Ordinarily, she’s up with the birds, doing all the housework.”

  “No, that’s all right. Let her sleep.”

  “And, boy, is she a good cook!”

  “I’ll bet,” he’d grin.

  “Is there anything we can get you? How about another cup of coffee?”

  “No thanks. I’m doing fine.”

  Anne finally complained about it to Mother.

  “He’s going to think they’re all dying to get rid of me,” she moaned.

  “He’s got more sense than that,” Mother said.

  “It used to be, when I had a fellow over, that I couldn’t get rid of the kids. They’d be all over me, or hiding under the sofa, or peeking through the keyhole, or making loud sounds of kisses every time anyone tried to hold my hand.”

  “I know it,” Mother sympathized. “And your father used to egg them on. I used to speak to him about it.”

  “I know you did. I’m not blaming you. But I’ll swear all that was better than what they do now. When we walk into a room now, they all nudge each other, when they think we’re not looking, and then get up and leave. It’s almost indecent.”