Read Online Belles on Their Toes by Frank B. Gilbreth - Free Book Online Page A

mean,” Anne nodded. “Mother’d die if she heard it.”
    We started for the dock. Jane walked some of the way by herself, and then Anne and Ernestine carried her together, in a chair they made of their hands and wrists. We knew Mother would want to see all of us when her boat pulled in.
    In a person’s lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment, there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart.
    The walk to the boat that afternoon was one of those occasions.
    The steamer rounded Brant Point and we could begin to distinguish the passengers.
    “I think I see Mother,” Lillian shouted breathlessly.
    “Where?” we asked her. “Where?”
    Lillian was too excited to tell us. “Mother,” she screamed, and then jumped up and down so that Anne had to grab her dress to keep her away from the edge of the dock.
    Then we all saw Mother. She was waving, and it looked as if perhaps she were jumping up and down a little too. She was still dressed in widow’s clothes, but her coloring had come back. Perhaps it was just a trick of the wind, which was billowing her dress behind her and may have accounted for the jaunty angle of her hat, but she seemed stronger and more sure of herself than we had ever seen her before.
    In a matter of minutes, the boat was tied to the dock and Mother was coming down the gangplank, struggling with two suitcases. Martha wasn’t the only one thinking about saving tips.
    People stood back and gave us room as we descended on her. First it was a mass greeting, and then we could tell that she was picking out each of us, and checking us off in her mind.
    “It’s so good to be home,” she said. “I can’t tell you how I felt when I saw all of you standing on the dock.”
    We said it was good to have her home. With the youngest ones hanging onto her skirts, and the rest of us trying to get as close as we could, we started walking down the dock.
    “I believe all of you have grown,” Mother told us, “and all of you look so tan and well!”
    “You should have seen us with the chicken pox,” Fred said. “We didn’t look so well then.”
    “We were sick as dogs,” Dan agreed. “And we took castor oil, too, Mother.”
    “That was fine,” Mother said absently. “I knew you’d do …” She stopped dead. “Chicken pox?” she said. “What about chicken pox?”
    “Didn’t we write you about that?” Anne asked innocently.
    “Mercy Maude,” said Mother. “You know perfectly well you didn’t. Who had it?”
    “All of us,” Anne grinned. “We got it the day you left.” She turned to the boys. “You might at least have waited until Mother got home, to break the news.”
    “That wasn’t one of the things you told us not to tell,” Fred said defensively.
    “You didn’t have anything else, did you?” Mother asked.
    Anne shook her head.
    “Anything else happen you didn’t write me about?”
    “That was the only important thing. Really!”
    Mother reached out, over the heads of Bob and Jack, and squeezed Anne impulsively around the waist. Anne looked as if whatever she had been through in the last five weeks had been worth while.
    Ernestine personally supervised the final stages of the roast beef, and it was red and tender. There were candles on the dinner table, and we used the good silver. No holly was to be had on Nantucket, at least in the summertime, but we decked the halls with boughs of bayberry.
    Mother thought the roast beef was delicious and made a point of complimenting Tom on it.
    “It ain’t done quite as much as it ought to be,” Tom told her, “but we got a lot of cooks around here spoiling the cloth.”
    “I’m afraid,” Mother said to us after Tom had retired to the kitchen, “that we won’t be able to have roast beef as often as we used to. That’ll be all right, won’t it?”
    “We know it,” Martha said. “You don’t have to worry about