in our hair, and apparently on the best of terms.
Anne deducted twenty cents from each of our allowances, which meant that some of the younger children didn’t get any spending money for two weeks, and there wasn’t any repetition.
Mother wrote daily, and her letters contained personal messages for each child. She could hardly wait to see Jack swim, and she was mighty proud he had learned. She certainly wouldn’t forget Martha’s bathing suit when she passed through Montclair. Ernestine shouldn’t worry about missing her college boards—it might be best anyway for her to take a post-graduate year at high school and start college after that, when the family would be a little more settled.
Most important of all, the talks at London and Prague had gone well—very well, she thought. And she had plans for opening a motion-study school at our house in Montclair.
All of us would be on the steps, waiting for Mr. Conway, the mailman, in the mornings. There was a calendar, with a red circle around Mother’s arrival date, hanging on the chimney in the dining room. Each morning at breakfast, Lillian, who was in charge of the calendar, marked off another day.
The morning before Mother’s arrival, we washed and oiled the floors, waxed the furniture, polished brass, scrubbed windows, and trimmed the bayberry bushes in the front yard. Everybody, including Tom, pitched in, and when we were through the house was cleaner than it was in the beginning, is now, or probably ever shall be.
We went for a quick swim, more for sanitary reasons than for relaxation, and then put on our best clothes. Everybody looked fine, even Martha in her hand-me-downs.
Ernestine had bought a large roast for supper and spent a good part of the early afternoon telling Tom what she intended to do to him, and how she intended to torture his cat, if he charred a single inch of it. It was the first roast we had had since we left Montclair.
Lillian was stationed at the top of the taller lighthouse as a lookout for the Nantucket boat. As soon as the smoke was visible, she let us know, and Anne lined us up in the dining room for a final inspection.
“Everyone’s alive and whole,” she began, just as Tom stuck his head into the doorway to see what was going on, “and nobody’s in jail.” Tom’s head disappeared again. “So I guess we did a pretty good job.”
She cleared her throat and paced the floor in front of us.
“You all know,” she said in her best oratorical style, “that I don’t enjoy making speeches.”
This was something we didn’t know at all because there were few things Anne enjoyed more. Before she went to college, she had been a mainstay of the high school debating team, and drove her arguments home with such enthusiasm that her coach used to tell her she was supposed merely to stump her opponents, not tree them.
“Now that I am about to relinquish my authority,” she continued, “I want to thank you one and all for your fine spirit of cooperation.
“I would caution you about three things,” she said, holding up the three fingers of her right hand and counting them off one at a time. “Don’t reveal to Mother about, one, Tom’s being arrested; two, the disgraceful clam chowder episode; or, three, Martha’s wearing insufficient clothing to the beach the day we arrived.”
“What’s she talking about, Fred?” Dan whispered loudly. “And why is she hollering and sticking out her arms like that?”
“Search me, Dan,” Fred whispered back just as loudly.
“I’m talking about this,” said Anne, forgetting her role as public speaker and leaning over so her face was on the level of theirs. “If you tell Mother about Tom and the fat woman, or about the clam chowder, or about the day Martha wore the under half of Mother’s suit to the beach, I’ll murder you.”
“You mean,” asked Fred, “the day she was naked except for that black underwear?”
“I like that!” Martha protested.
“That’s just what I
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