Belles on their Toes

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 lie 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 feast 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 that."
    "We're used to substitutes," Frank put in.
    "We'll have to rely a little more on less expensive things like—well, liver, cold cuts, fish, and clam chowder."
    "I love clam chowder," said Ernestine glaring at Frank. "We'll have some of that real soon."
    "She eats it until it comes out of her ears," Frank smirked complacently. Then imitating Tom, he laughed through his nose. "Henc, henc, I'm sorry for what I done, but henc, henc, henc."
    "What's the matter, dear?" Mother asked. "Is something stuck in your windpipe? Hit him on the back, Bill."
    "There's nothing the matter with him," said Bill, who obliged anyway, with all his might.
    "It's just a noise he makes," Anne explained.
    "Oh," said Mother, obviously relieved. "That's good. Only I don't believe I'd ever make a noise like that unless I had to, dear."
    Anne thought we were skating too close to both the clam chowder and the Tom-and-stick episodes, and was eager to change the subject.
    "I think it's time for Martha's surprise," she said. "What do you think Mother, we only spent $300 of the money you gave us."
    "Why you couldn't have," Mother replied. "The tickets to Nantucket must have cost... and Martha wrote she had forgotten her clothes... and the milk bill... You didn't sell anything, did you dear?"
    "That was my surprise, you speech-maker you," Martha protested. "You said I could tell her."
    "That's what I want you to do," Anne said. "You were in charge of the budget, so you're the one to tell her."
    "Yes, you tell me, dear," Mother nodded.
    "We spent $296.05," said Martha, who always knew the bank balance to the last penny.
    "I don't know how you did it," Mother told us, shaking her head. "Why if we can keep going at that rate, I know everything will be all right."
    "And we've been eating like kings," Ernestine put in.
    "I'd like you to help me run the house, just as you've been doing," Mother said. "And I'd like Martha to keep the budget—goodness knows I never could manage money that well."
    "You'll have to make out a requisition form in triplicate when you want even two cents for a stamp," Anne warned.
    "No she won't either," Martha said. "Mother's an exception. She'll only have to make out one form, and I'll fill out the two duplicates."
    "Thank you, dear," said Mother. She sounded as if she meant it.
    Mother had brought each of us a present. Not expensive presents, such as Dad used to bring when he returned from Europe, she explained. Just something to let us know she'd been