Belles on their Toes

the tune of a horn that played the first bar of "Jingle Bells."
    "You can see for yourself she's made a terrible mistake," Martha told Mother indignantly. "You're going to have to tell her so."
    "I don't think it's fair to judge the boy on such a short acquaintance," Mother said.
    "We're trailing by one point," Frank mimicked, "and we're on the thirty-five-yard line."
    "Thirty-five-yard stripe," Martha corrected.
    "Stripe," Frank agreed. "I call the signal for a drop kick, and the center..."
    "Pivot man," said Martha.
    "And the pivot man looked back like he thought I was crazy. The stands are going wild."
    "You stop that," said Mother. "He's Ernestine's friend and he's a guest, and that ought to be enough for all of us."
    "It's certainly enough for me," Martha replied. "I'll bet two thousand beans on that!"
    "Suppose he should become our brother," Fred said. "How would you like that, Dan?"
    "A good question," Martha agreed. "Now go up and wash your mouth out with soap."
    We thought Anne, as the oldest, should try to help us make Mother see the light. But Anne merely grinned knowingly at Mother, who tried to avoid her glance.
    "We're not going to discuss the matter any more," Mother said. "I want you boys to take his suitcases upstairs, and I don't want anybody to do anything to hurt Ernestine's feelings."
    Frank and Bill each took a sticker-spangled suitcase, and Fred followed with the ukulele.
    "If Dad were here," Bill said as he deposited the bags at the foot of his bed, "he'd run that sheik out of the house and all the way over the state line."
    "When he pulled that stuff about keeping her warm with his sleeves," Frank agreed, "that's when Dad would have swung at him. Mother doesn't understand what things like that can lead to, the way Dad did."
    The boys decided that as the men of the house it as up to them to get rid of Al. Since it was futile to work on Ernestine, the best approach was to do a job on Al.
    All the boys took baths that afternoon, and toward the end the hot water gave out. Frank got a screwdriver and took the bolt off the boys' bathroom door, Bill opened the bathroom window.
    In spite of their coats and the blanket, Ern and Al were blue when they returned home, about half an our before the supper guests were to arrive. Both hurried upstairs to bathe and dress.
    The boys were in Fred's and Dan's room, and they heard Al walking around as he unpacked and undressed. Finally they heard him enter the bathroom, experiment with the door to see why it wouldn't lock, and then slam down the window.
    The water started to run in the tub.
    "We'll wait about three minutes," Frank chuckled. "Can't you just see him now, shivering, leaning over, and running his finger under the faucet, waiting for the water to get hot?"
    A chilled, unhappy baritone started to emerge from the boys' bathroom. Something about how undergraduates at Sagiwan were willing to give their all to the institution, and about how other seats of learning would find their lines riddled and their ends outflanked.
    Mr. Lynch apparently was one who subscribed to the theory that if you couldn't lock it, the next best thing was to make such a racket that everybody would know it was occupied.
    The water in the tub finally stopped running. The baritone became more chilled and unhappy, was choked off entirely in a shuddering gasp, and then was breathlessly resumed.
    "He's under water," Frank said. "Go ahead, Bill." Bill walked down the hall to the bathroom and went in. Al, sitting miserably in about an inch of water, grabbed for a washcloth when he heard the door open, and spread it over himself as best he could.
    "Brrr," shivered Bill, "what have you got the room so cold for?"
    "Good Lord," hissed Al, "I thought maybe you were one of the girls. For Pete's sake, close that door."
    "Oh, don't worry about that," said Bill, closing it. "Nobody thinks anything about things like that in a large family."
    "They don't?" Al asked dubiously.
    "Nobody'll pay any attention to you if they walk in," Bill said. "They won't even notice you're in the tub."
    "You mean they may come in?"
    Bill shrugged his shoulders. "What have you got it so cold for? Is that part of the training rules?"
    "I haven't got it cold on purpose, you can bet your sweet life on that," Al yelped. "The window was open, and there wasn't a drop of hot water."
    "I believe I'd leave the door open," Bill suggested. "At least until the room warms up."
    "Just leave the door closed. I don't come from a