Belles on their Toes

he always looked as if he wasn't quite sure whether he was holding the baby right side up. And he seemed worried that he might cause the minister to make an embarrassing blunder.
    We older children would be sitting with our various Sunday school classes, in the galleries on each side of the altar, dreading what we knew we were going to do, and yet knowing that we couldn't help doing it.
    We always disgraced ourselves at the christenings of our younger brothers and sisters. As the baby squirmed in Dad's arms, while he kept peering down into the dress to make sure the head was still on top, the situation would seem more and more ludicrous to us. We'd think about how Dad had stormed beforehand, and how he was going to storm afterwards at Sunday dinner.
    Then it would happen, and we would disgrace ourselves again. Suddenly, one of us would explode in a snorting giggle. You couldn't hold it back—it was embarrassing, but it was just too funny, and there wasn't anything you could do about it.
    Another one of us, sitting with another class and vowing that this time he could control himself, would hear the snort, and he would explode too. Finally, all of us would be giggling, and people down in the congregation would crane their necks to see what was causing the disturbance.
    Since Dad only went to church for the christening of his own children, he comforted himself with the thought that a few jackasses in the balcony always giggled whenever a child was baptized. Although this belief was completely erroneous, we did our best not to dispel it.
    "Worst-mannered congregation I ever saw," he'd complain afterwards. "They seem to think a christening is like a vaudeville show."

    Bob's baby was a wiggler. As Bob and his wife and the two other couples stood in front of the minister, the dress of Bob's daughter started to slide over her head. With considerable concern, Bob looked down. Just for a minute, it was Dad all over again. Just for a minute, the older ones who were sitting with Mother were little children again, up in the galleries with their Sunday school classes.
    Ernestine had a horrible thought. Suppose she should suddenly start to giggle? It was bad enough when a child did that. But suppose an adult, herself the mother of two children, should do it? It was out of the question, of course. Adults could control themselves. They simply didn't make scenes like that.
    Bob's daughter wiggled some more, and Bob looked down again to find her head.

    Ernestine snorted. She put her hand over her mouth, but the giggle came out through her nose. You could hear it all over the church.
    Ernestine's husband and children looked at her with amazement. Mother hunched her shoulders instinctively, and kept her eyes straight ahead, as if Ernestine were someone else's daughter who had got into our group by mistake.
    Ernestine tried biting her lips, but it was no use. She sat there and giggled. So did the rest of us, in a series of moist explosions. So, although she still denies it, did Mother. There are witnesses to prove it.
    So did the congregation and so did the minister— he had been at the church for years, and recalled the old days. Fortunately the christening service hadn't quite started; he stopped everything and laughed until he had to dig under his vestments to get a handkerchief.
    Finally there was quiet again, and the three babies were baptized. The minister climbed back into the pulpit, and looked down at us. We weren't too happy about the way we had behaved.
    "I don't know as I'd want to go through it all over again and have the eleven of you up in the balcony every Sunday," he began. "I'm not as young as I used to be. But it's good to have you here on a visit. If s good to see you together again. Mighty good!"
    We glanced at Mother to see how she was taking it, and for the first time we knew for certain why she lived alone. We knew that, glad as she was to have us home, she lived alone because she liked it.
    For Mother was nodding agreement. She didn't want to go through with it all over again, either. One generation was enough.
    Mother looked as if the minister had taken the words right out of her mouth.
    Mother still lives in the same apartment. She retired from Purdue when she reached seventy, but she is busier than ever today.
    Not long ago, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Management Association awarded to her, and to Dad posthumously, the Gantt medal for "pioneer work in management and the