Belles on their Toes

two sessions. At first, it seemed out of the question to accept. And then it seemed to be the one opportunity of keeping the family together. Engineering was, and still is, a man's field. Mother knew there would be difficulties in trying to continue Dad's business. But if she made a success of her two speeches in Europe, before some of the biggest engineers in the world, she might have an easier time in convincing Dad's clients that she could do the work.
    Mother wasn't accustomed to making decisions. Those, in the past, had been left to Dad. He had set the pattern, and she had followed it. Even the idea of twelve children had been his originally. But if Dad thought an idea was good, Mother was convinced it was marvelous.
    There was a time when Mother wept easily, when she was afraid of walking alone at night, when a lightning storm would send her shuddering into a dark closet.
    All that ended the day Dad died. It ended because it had to end. It ended because of the realization that what she really feared was that something would separate them.
    Well, what she had feared had happened, and tears would not wash out a word of it. So she gave his speech in London and presided for him in Prague. And she was not afraid any more.

2
AUSTERITY BUDGET

    Dad used to complain that if the Bureau of Standards in Washington ever needed a precise definition or an exact measurement of a Jack of All Trades Who Was Master of None, all it would have to do was to build a glass cage, create a vacuum therein, chill to zero degrees centigrade, and send for Tom.
    Tom had been with the family for seventeen years as Dad's handy man. The title should not be taken too literally. In a household whose routine was bound by a chain of efficiency, Tom was unquestionably the weakest link.
    Tom knew a little something about everything. Not enough to fix it if it were broken, but enough to think he could. He was unwilling to concede that any job was too big for him, or that he had not done a similar, but infinitely more difficult, job before.
    He never forgot a mistake, either, and so was able to keep making the same errors over and over again.
    Tom was of Irish descent, small, light footed, and tough. Although no longer young even when he first came to work for us, he still clung to the belief that the bigger they came the harder they fell. As a result, he sometimes presented a battered and swollen appearance, and would walk around the house announcing darkly:
    "I don't take nothing from nobody, unnerstand? Nothing from nobody."
    He was always evasive when asked how he had received the bruises, but would manage to leave the impression that the six club-swinging bullies who sprang on him in the dark, when his back was turned, would be released from the hospital in a fortnight or so.
    Tom liked children and animals, and all of us were immensely fond of him. Before Mother left, she had decided it would be necessary to discharge either the cook or Tom, as an economy move. It never occurred to any of us, or to Tom, that he should be the one to g°-
    "Why Tom," Martha had said, putting into words what all of us were thinking, "would be willing to cut off his right arm for us."
    He would have, too. There was no guarantee, though, that in his eagerness to oblige he wouldn't have got rattled and cut off his left arm by mistake.
    So the cook had departed and Tom had moved permanently into the kitchen. He now wore a butcher's apron and a chef's cap, and boasted that he never had followed a recipe in his life. This last was all too obvious.
    The discharging of the cook was the only economy measure Mother had had time to effect. She hadn't said anything about our cutting other expenses. But Mother made it a policy never to tell us to do the things she thought we were old enough to do without prompting.
    When Mother said good-by, for instance, there was no last minute outpouring about being good, and going to bed early, and brushing our teeth and doing what Anne told us.
    We knew Mother wanted those things done, so there was no need for her to repeat them. She may have worried—of course she worried—about whether we'd do them or not. But she didn't intend to show any lack of confidence unless we gave her reason.
    There was no doubt that the immediate problem was saving money. For the time being, perhaps indefinitely, there would be little or no money coming in. When there are eleven children in a family, there is always money going out.
    We talked economy in the