Belles on their Toes

Anne was enthused, her voice had all the modulation of a cheer leader's in the last minutes of the final quarter. Morton edged still further away. "I knew you and your Mother were coming to Nantucket," she added, "but I had no idea we'd be on the same boat."
    "We were on the night boat with you, too," Morton reported resentfully. "We saw you come aboard."
    "Oh, you did?" was all Anne could manage.
    "Was that your dog that howled all night?"
    "I didn't hear anything," Anne said.
    Morton edged some more, and Anne finally realized that he didn't want to be mistaken for one of our group. The realization made her furious.
    "Come on over," she said, "and meet everybody. Pull up a chair and make yourself at home."
    "No thanks. I've got to run."
    "Why don't you bring your Mother up here, and we'll all sit together?"
    The suggestion caused Morton to drop all pretense of edging, and to break into an open retreat.
    "See you around," he whispered over his shoulder.
    "Or," Anne hollered after him, "we could all come and sit with you."
    Morton disappeared down a ladder to the lower decks.
    "So that's Morton Dykes," Ernestine said. "Gee, he's cute—and so tall. The least you could have done was introduce me."
    "I tried," Anne told her bitterly. "You heard me try."
    "The whole boat heard you," Martha said. "If you ask me, he's a beanpole and a wet smack."
    "You're just judging him as a potential book carrier,'' Ernestine grinned. "You know those tall, thin ones get tired easily."
    "He seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere," Martha said. "Does he always edge that way, like a crab?"
    "He was ashamed of us,'' said Anne. "Well, any feeling I may have had for him in the past is dead. Completely dead."
    "Why would anyone be ashamed of us?" Bill wanted, to know. "You girls are crazy. He looked to me like he had heard about our chicken pox, and he hasn't had them."
    "Martha's right," Ernestine agreed. "He is a wet smack."
    "Dead," Anne repeated dramatically. "Completely dead."

5
MOTHER'S BATHING SUIT

    All of us, but especially Anne, were glad to see our cottage at Nantucket.
    Dad had named the cottage The Shoe, in honor of Mother, because he said she was like the old lady who lived in one. The Shoe was flanked by two circular lighthouses, which Dad had bought years before from the government. One lighthouse had been used by Dad as a study, and the other by us as an overflow dormitory.
    We wondered how Nantucket was going to be without Dad. He had left his mark on every room in The Shoe. There were the dot and dash messages he had painted on the ceilings over our beds, the summer he decided we should learn the Morse code. There were the astronomical diagrams he had painted billboard fashion on the dining-room walls, snowing the size of the earth and other planets, as compared with big stars. There were photographs of nebulae and constellations that had been given Dad by Harvard University, and which he had hung only two feet from the floor, so that even the smallest children could see them.
    We went from room to room, looking at everything and finding it good.
    The trunks had followed us from the express office at the dock. Martha opened them in the dining room, found a comfortable chair, and started giving us instructions about unpacking them.
    Everyone came and got his clothes, and put them in the bureaus. Tom fed the animals and cleaned the kitchen. Frank and Bill put up the screens. Anne and Ernestine swept away a winter's accumulation of sand.
    "That's the most efficient house opening we ever had," Anne told us when we were through. "Everyone did a fine job, particularly Martha on the packing."
    "Martha is Dad all over again," Ernestine agreed. "She's naturally efficient."
    Martha grinned happily, pushed herself up from her chair, and started over to the trunks to get her own clothes. Someplace between the chair and the trunks, a terrible realization struck her. She knew the trunks would be empty, and they were. She knew, too, there wasn't any use asking if anyone had picked up her clothes by mistake.
    "Don't anybody ever say I'm efficient again," she squealed.
    "Of course you're efficient," said Anne. "Stop fishing for any more compliments. I just finished saying you did a fine job on the packing, and we've got everything we need."
    "We haven't got my clothes or bathing suit," Martha shouted, "and we need those. I haven't got a stitch except what I've got on my back."
    "Nonsense," Anne said. "They must be around someplace. Who