Belles on their Toes

dropping down beside Anne on her bed. "Goodness knows I went through the same thing when I was engaged to your father. I was in California and he was 3,000 miles away in Boston."
    "No one knows what it's like," Anne said hopelessly. "Nothing was keeping you from getting married."
    "Well, I was some older than you," Mother admitted. "I had already graduated from college. But you've only got a little more than a year to go."
    "We'd like to get married right away," Anne whispered. She threw her arms around Mother. "Oh, Mother, what am I going to do?"
    "It'll work out all right," Mother promised.
    "It sounds selfish, I know that," Anne said. "But that's what we'd like—to get married right away."
    "It doesn't sound selfish at all," Mother told her. "It sounds like the most natural thing in the world. If you didn't feel that way. I'd know you'd picked the wrong man. But I think it would be better for you to wait a while, dear."
    "I know it," Anne burst into tears. "I know you'll need me here to help run the house until the younger children are grown."
    "Lie down, dear, and let me rub your back."
    "I know it, and he knows it," Anne sobbed. "We know it's out of the question."
    "Why the children won't be grown for fifteen years," Mother said. "You don't think I mean for you to wait that long! I don't need you to help run the house. I just want you to wait until you finish college."
    "But it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be."
    "Of course it would be right. Ernestine helps run the house now, just as well as you used to. And Martha will do just as well as either of you—even better, I suspect—when Ernestine goes off to Smith this autumn."
    "Go ahead and rub," said Anne, lying on her stomach and drying her eyes on the pillowcase.
    "You don't think I want a bunch of spinsters around the house, scolding me because the dusting isn't done properly, do you?" Mother asked, rubbing.
    "You really don't?"
    "And you don't think I want to support you forever, do you?" Mother teased.
    "Well, naturally, I thought you'd want me to get a job."
    "If you had a job, you wouldn't be any help running the house," said Mother, emphasizing her logic by slapping her where she sat down. "Why I'll be tickled to death to get rid of you."
    "I wouldn't blame you if you were," Anne sighed. "I honestly wouldn't."
    "But I do think it would be best to wait until you graduate. Just to set an example to the other children, for one thing."
    Anne said that waiting a year wouldn't be anything. It was waiting fifteen, that had her worried.
    "I wouldn't even ask you to wait that long, but you know how much your father wanted all of you to finish college," Mother explained. "I guess it's something I promised myself I'd do for him."
    "And you're sure you're not going to need me at home?"
    "It's a mistake ever to think of yourself as indispensable," said Mother, rubbing, and then slapping er in the same place again. "Why don't you telephone him and ask him if he can't spend the rest of the holidays with us. We'd all like to meet him."
    Anne leaped from the bed. "I sure will," she shouted. "Why he'll pack up in a minute and... Wait a minute. You're not trying to give him the Al Lynch treatment, are you?" she asked suspiciously.
    "Not unless he brings a ukulele."
    "He's not like that. You'll see."

    We called him Doctor Bob, to distinguish him from our own Bob. We couldn't decide whether we liked him or not, at first, because he was quiet until you got to know him. He had a conservative black Ford coupe, with Michigan license plates, and he dressed like a businessman rather than a college boy.
    Frank and Bill had moved out of their room again, and doubled up with Fred and Dan. When Doctor Bob found out about that, he made Frank move back with him.
    "For the last ten years I've been living in fraternity houses and hospitals," he said. "I wouldn't feel at home in a room all by myself. And there's no need for you four to be crowded up like that."
    The bathtub maneuver, with Frank masquerading as a girl, had worked so well on Al that the boys had considered trying it on Doctor Bob. But after he relieved the congestion in Fred's and Dan's room, they decided to drop the whole idea.
    "It wouldn't work on him anyway," Bill explained. "If anyone walked in on him, he wouldn't mind. He'd probably say, 'Hi, Sis," and go right on washing."
    Tom stood in some awe of Anne's fiancé, since he was a doctor, although a young one. But the awe was not sufficient to prevent Tom from