Cheaper by the Dozen

could be heard pounding on the floors above. Doors slammed, there was a landslide on the stairs, and we started skidding into the parlor.
    "Nine seconds," said Dad pocketing his stopwatch. "Three short of the all-time record."
    "God's teeth," said Mrs. Mebane. "What is it? Tell me quickly. It is a school? No. Or is it...? For Lord's sakes. It is!"
    "It is what?" asked Dad.
    "It's your family. Don't try to deny it. They're the spit and image of you, and your wife, too."
    "I was about to introduce you," said Dad. "Mrs. Mebane, let me introduce you to the family—or most of it. Seems to me like there should be some more of them around here someplace."
    "God help us all."
    "How many head of children do we have now, Lillie, would you say off hand?"
    "Last time I counted, seems to me there was an even dozen of them," said Mother. "I might have missed one or two of them, but not many."
    "I'd say twelve would be a pretty fair guess," Dad said.
    "Shame on you!And within eighteen miles of national headquarters."
    "Let's have tea," said Mother.
    But Mrs. Mebane was putting on her coat. "You poor dear," she clucked to Mother. "You poor child." Then turning to Dad. "It seems to me that the people of this town have pulled my leg on two different occasions today."
    "How revolting," said Dad. "And within eighteen miles of national headquarters, too."

Chapter 8
Kissing Kin

    The day the United States entered the first World War, Dad sent President Wilson a telegram which read: "Arriving Washington 7:03 p.m. train. If you don't know how to use me, I'll tell you how."
    Whether or not this heartening intelligence took some of the weight off Mr. Wilson's troubled shoulders, Dad never made entirely plain. But he was met at the train and taken over to the War Department. The next time we saw him, he was in uniform, assigned to motion study training in assembling and disassembling the Lewis machine gun and other automatic weapons. He had what probably was the most G.I. haircut in the entire armed forces, and when he walked into the parlor and shouted "Attention!" he wanted to hear our heels dick.
    Mother had been planning for several years to take all of us to California to visit her family. When Dad was ordered to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the time seemed opportune.
    Mother's family was genteel and well-to-do. She was the oldest of nine children, only three of whom were married. The other six, two brothers and four sisters, lived with their parents in a spacious house at 426 Twenty-Ninth Street, in Oakland. The house was fringed with palm trees, magnificent gardens, and concealed but nonetheless imposing outbuildings in which the family indulged its various hobbies. There were a billiard hall, radio shack, greenhouse, pigeon roost, and a place where prize-winning guinea pigs were raised.
    The Mollers had three Packards, a French chauffeur named Henriette, a gardener, Chinese cook, first-story maid, and second-story maid. The Mollers managed, somehow, in spite of their worldly goods, to live fairly simply. They were quiet, introverted, and conservative. They seldom raised their voices and referred to each other as "Dear Elinor, Dear Mable, Dear Gertrude," and so on. Mother was "Dear Lillie."
    Mother was the only one in her family who had moved from California. Mother had left home after her marriage, as introverted and conservative, and possibly even more shy and bookish, than any of the others. In ten years, she had seven children. She was lecturing around the country. She was a career woman and her name kept bobbing up in the newspapers. Frankly, the Mollers didn't know exactly what to make of Dear Lillie. But they knew they loved her.
    Even before we visited California, we knew all about the household at Oakland and its inhabitants, because Mother used to like to tell us about her girlhood. We knew the arrangement of the house, even down to the full-length mirror on the hall door, which Mother's younger sisters used to open at just the right angle so that they could watch Dad's courting technique.
    Hearing Mother tell about the courtship, the sparking on the sofa, we used to wonder what Mother's parents had thought when Dad first came to call.
    He had met Mother in Boston, about a year before, when she was on that well-chaperoned tour to Europe, with several other Oakland girls. The chaperone, who was Dad's cousin, had introduced him to all the girls, but he had selected Miss Lillie as the one on whom to shower his attention.
    He took