Belles on their Toes

wanted that.
    "Don't worry about us," Anne assured Mother now. "Everything will be hotsy, honest!"
    "I'm sure it will, dear," Mother smiled. "Not only hotsy, but totsy, too."
    The driver started to help her into the cab.
    "I'm sorry about your husband," he said.
    "Thank you very much." Now Mother's voice sounded far away.
    "I talked to a fellow that saw it happen. It must have been an awful shock for you."
    "Shut up," Frank whispered fiercely. "Why can't he just shut up?"
    Anne nudged Frank sharply, and he was quiet.
    We got back into line as the cab started down the driveway. We could see Mother waving from the window in the back.
    Lillian, who was ten, burst into tears.
    "I want to go with Mother," she sobbed. "Tell her to come back."
    Anne took two steps and stood in front of Lill, blocking her from view.
    "I told you not to do that," Anne said between her teeth. "I told you the first one who did that before Mother left I'm going to murder."
    Anne sounded as if she meant it, too.
    "I can't help it," Lill cried. "She's got to come back."
    All the way up Eagle Rock Way, we could see Mother waving. We smiled and waved back. Lill stopped crying before the car was out of sight, and Anne stepped aside, so that Lill could wave too.
    The car disappeared around a curve, and Lill burst into tears again.
    "I didn't mean to," she sobbed. "Honest, I didn't."
    "It's all right," Anne told her. "We know you didn't."
    "Do you think she could see me at the end, when I was waving?"
    "I'm sure she could," Anne said. "Of course she could, honey." Anne burst into tears herself.
    We went back into the house, and suddenly we didn't feel so depressed any more. Perhaps it was the saying good-by we had dreaded, even more than being without Mother. Mother had gone on trips before, and we had lived through them. And she'd be back in a little more than a month.
    "Everybody," said Anne, drying her tears, "did fine. I think Mother was proud of us."
    "We'll get things running like clockwork around here," Ernestine told us. "Mother won't know us when she gets back."
    We began to see that what seemed the end of everything might really be just a beginning. There was even a certain exhilaration in knowing that Mother had had enough confidence in us to leave us by ourselves.
    "Yes, sir," said Anne, almost gaily, "everything went so well that, for the first time, I think we're going to make a go of it." She was fairly beaming now. "Everybody behaved so well I could kiss you all."
    "I knew it," said Bill, ducking. "The minute Mother leaves, you start making threats."
    Anne grabbed him, and planted a resounding, moist smack on the side of his neck. Bill struggled, giggled, and hollered. The noise sounded fine after three days of whispers. The tension began to drain out of us.
    "I know we're going to be able to stay together," Ernestine said. "I'm so sure of it now that I could almost go build that bonfire Dad always talked about."
    "Let's see," Anne grinned. "Where's the nearest holly tree?"
    "You keep away from his razors, though," Frank warned. "I'll be needing those one day."
    Ernestine and Martha hooted. Bill mentioned something about how the cat would be fully competent to lick off any whiskers that Frank had at present or might produce for years to come. Anne kissed Bill loudly again, and he hollered some more.
    Frank ran an exploratory hand across his chin, but there was no sound of sandpaper.

    Mother sailed with the tide that morning aboard the Scythia for England.
    Dad had been scheduled to speak at the London Power Conference, and to preside over a session of the World Congress of Scientific Mandgement, at the Masaryk Academy, in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
    Those two honors meant that his work in motion study and the elimination of fatigue in industry were being recognized internationally.
    Dad had been a consulting engineer and efficiency expert, specializing in big industry. He was the creator of motion study, which as one skeptic alleged— and Dad never denied—was designed to "make it easy to work hard."
    Dad's method was to study a worker's motions, and then to cut down those motions, often by redesigning the machinery that the man operated. Mother was his business partner. She had given him a dozen children and had written with him a half dozen books explaining motion study.
    Now she wanted to make certain that he received the recognition the European meetings would bring. And so did we.
    She had been invited to substitute for him at the