Belles on their Toes

"Don't pay any attention to him, Mother."
    "Oh, we want you to make the speech, don't we Bill?" Frank said with all the heartiness he could muster. "We're looking forward to it."
    "Sure," Bill agreed, "especially if it isn't about the family."
    Mother tried, in her speech at junior high, to explain the importance of standardizing nuts, bolts and machine parts, to eliminate waste. She saw she had aimed over the children's heads, so she sought to illustrate.
    "Here's what I mean," she said. "Take boys' shirts. Almost every shirt has a different type button. When one comes off and gets lost, you know how much trouble your mothers have to find one just like it."
    The children seemed to understand that, so Mother continued.
    "Think how much time would be saved if all shirts had exactly the same kind of buttons. Do you know what I do? When one of the buttons comes off a shirt, I cut off the button at the collar, and move it down to replace the missing button. Then I just put any old button at the collar, because the tie hides it and it doesn't show."
    Frank and Bill exchanged glances across the assembly hall; they knew that that had done it.
    Three boys cornered Bill after school and demanded that he loosen his tie, so they could examine the button. Bill wouldn't have objected to showing them, if they had asked nicely. Bill was good-natured enough, but it usually was a good idea to ask him nicely.
    In junior high school there were accepted rules about fair fights, so Bill could take on his opponents one at a time, and Frank's assistance wasn't needed. When it was over, Bill's tie was tattered and blood-spangled, but still proudly waved.
    Ernestine and Martha once again persuaded the younger ones not to tell Mother what had precipitated the fight.
    And then an invitation came through from high school, and the older girls were panic-stricken.
    "We're ruined," Martha groaned.
    "Thinking it over," Ernestine said to Bill and Fred, "giving the matter mature deliberation, I believe you two boys had better tell Mother what happened after she spoke at your schools."
    "Tell her nothing," Bill grinned. "I enjoyed it. Anyway, we don't want to hurt her feelings."
    "I don't see what you're scared of," Fred said. "They don't make you eat soap in high school, do they?"
    "If you tell her now, after making us keep quiet," Bill threatened, "I'll give her some stories to put in her speech. Like about the time something fell off and tripped you when you walked into the movies, because you had used motion study by fastening it with a safety pin."
    "Good night," Ernestine blanched. "You don't think she'd tell that one, do you?"
    "Just don't go hurting her feelings," Bill warned.
    Mother spoke at high school about process charts for industry. And she illustrated what process charts were by explaining about the ones we had in our bathrooms.
    Few speakers ever got a better reception at the high school assembly. But Ernestine and Martha wished she'd take up bridge, like other mothers, or confine her speeches to audiences west of the Mississippi.
    "You've got to be more careful," Martha stormed to Mother that night.
    "It's gone too far," Ernestine agreed. "We'll never live it down."
    "For goodness' sake, what's the trouble?" Mother asked. The girls seldom addressed her that way, and she was frankly concerned.
    "It was bad enough when Fred had to eat soap— dark gray soap," Martha said. "And it was bad enough when Bill had to fight to save his necktie."
    "But do you know what I've been getting all day?" Ernestine asked. " 'My, you look fresh as a daisy, baby. I'll bet you made a little mark on the bath chart before you came to school this morning.' "
    Mother had had her usual full day. After her speech, she had come home and taught her course. There had been the customary interruptions by Tom. Dan was in bed with a sore throat, and she had spent half an hour reading to him, and another half hour playing Parchesi. The mending seemed to gain on her, no matter how much time she devoted to it. All in all, she was thoroughly tired and discouraged.
    "I guess I put my foot in it," she agreed. "The only reason I made the talks was because I thought you children wanted me to."
    "Well, gee, we did," said Martha, "only..."
    "I try," said Mother, and there were no theatrics in it; just a statement of fact, "to do the best I can."
    "We know you do," Ernestine told her. "We shouldn't have said anything about it."
    "Why did Fred have to eat soap?"
    "The story about