Belles on their Toes

ain't nothin' like that,"
    Tom departed, and Mother began to feel sorry for him.
    "It's probably the cat then," she said. "I guess I'd better go see it, or he'll never forgive me," She got up from the sofa. "If you'll excuse me..."
    "We'll go with you, if it's all right," Miss Lies said. "I've been dying to see what he comes into the office to get you for."
    "I'm sure Tom wouldn't mind," Mother agreed.
    Everybody filed out to the kitchen, and Tom was delighted with the size of his audience.
    "You know how the children is always stepping on Fourteen's tail by mistake when she's eating?" Tom asked. "Well, I been putting her milk on top of the ice box and feeding her there."
    "That makes sense," Mother agreed doubtfully.
    "I lifted her up there twicet, and then look what I learned her."
    Tom opened the ice box door and leaned in, as if to get a bottle of milk. The cat, which had been watching him from under a table, jumped onto his back and then to the top of the ice box.
    "Bravo," shouted Mr. Yoyogo, who thus became a member of Tom's Club for a thousand years and four days.
    "Smartest cat I ever trained, bar none," Tom gloated, pouring Fourteen some milk and flicking her whiskers with his forefinger.
    All of us thought it was a good trick, and told him so.
    "Let's see will he do it for you, Mrs. Gilbreth?" Tom said. He lifted down the cat. "Just lean in the ice box like you was getting some milk."
    Mother shivered. "I can't stand to have anything ticklish on my back—you children know that," she explained. "Just the thought of it gives me the creeps."
    Mother's back was her Achilles' heel. Sometimes, to tease her, we'd sneak up behind her and play creep-mouse with our fingers along her backbone. She'd squeal like a little girl, and shudder.
    Finally Mr. Yoyogo agreed to volunteer for the experiment, and Fourteen performed as advertised.
    "Bar none!" Tom repeated. "She's the smartest."
    "From now on," Miss Lies told Tom, "whenever you tell Mrs. Gilbreth to come back here, we're all coming. I wouldn't miss anything like this."
    Miss Lies was in the Club for a thousand years and four days, too.
    After we had returned to the parlor, Mr. Bruce, the handsome American who represented the drug firm, said he wanted to get all of us straight.
    "I know the two biggest girls are Ernestine and Martha," he said. "Which is Ernestine?"
    '"I'm Ernestine," she told him, sending her eyelashes into a flutter designed to cause boys to leave home.
    "And I'm Martha," cooed Martha, with a slow, open-lipped smile, also designed to lure striplings from their domiciles.
    "You can tell them apart," Frank said, "because Martha has the dimpled knees, and Ernestine has the trim little ankles."
    Mother said that would be sufficient from Frank, and the men replied they had seen nothing deficient in the knees or ankles of either girl. Somehow, though, they seemed more interested in Mother's apple cake and in the younger children, than in the high-school girls.
    "I'll bet," Bill told Mr. Bruce, "that you used to play football when you were a boy."
    "I used to play some," Mr. Bruce conceded. "But that was quite a while ago. Before the War. I don't believe I've touched a football since."
    It developed that all the men had played football or rugby at one time or another, except Mr. Yoyogo, whose game was baseball.
    "You boys don't happen to have a football, do you?" Mr. Bruce asked. "It might be fun, sometime, to get a little exercise by passing it around."
    "Sure we do," Bill said. "We can pass it right now."
    "Oh, not now," Mr. Bruce said hastily. "I just meant sometime. We're having tea now."
    "Go ahead if you want to," Mother told him. "Miss Lies and the girls and I will chat. We won't be going back to work for a half hour or so."
    "The men don't want to play games with you boys," said Ernestine. "Why don't you stop bothering them?"
    The men didn't seem to think it was a bother. After asking Mother if she was sure she didn't mind, they followed the boys out to the side lawn, and picked sides for a game of touch football. All the men played except Mr. Yoyogo, who said he'd have to watch until he learned the rules.
    Tom was cutting the grass up front, and walked over to join the Japanese on the side lines.
    "You don't like exercise, Mr. Yoyo?" he asked.
    "I like it. But I never played before."
    "If you like exercise," said Tom, "I'm going to learn you some motion study about cutting grass."
    They walked over to the lawn mower, and Tom explained that his