Cheaper by the Dozen

the tourists filed out, and frequently collected tips.
    Mother was irked. "I never heard of such a thing in all my born days. Imagine taking perfect strangers though our bedrooms, and the house a wreck, most likely."
    "Well," said Dad, who was convinced the tourists had come to see his visual education methods, "there's no need for us to be selfish about the ideas we've developed. Maybe it's not a bad plan to let the public see what we're doing." He leaned back reflectively in his chair, an old mahogany pew from some church. Dad had found the pew, disassembled, in the basement of our cottage. He had resurrected it reverently, rubbed it down, put it together, and varnished it. The pew was his seat of authority in The Shoe, and the only chair which fitted him comfortably and in which he could place complete confidence.
    "I wonder how much money Tom took in," he said to Mother. "Maybe we could work out some sort of an arrangement so that Tom could split tips from future admissions..."
    '"The idea!" said Mother. 'There'll be no future admissions. The very idea."
    "Can't you take a joke? I was only joking. Where's your sense of humor?"
    "I know." Mother nodded her head. "I'm not supposed to have any. But did you ever stop to think that there might be some women, somewhere; who might think their husbands were joking if they said they had bought two lighthouses and..."
    Dad started to laugh, and as he rocked back and forth be shook the house so that loose whitewash flaked off the ceiling and landed on the top of his head. When Dad laughed, everybody laughed—you couldn't help it And Mother, after a losing battle to remain severe, joined in.
    "By jingo," he wheezed. "And I guess there are some women, somewhere, who wouldn't want the Morse code, and planets, and even Therbligs, painted all over the walls of their house, either. Come over here, boss, and let me take back everything I ever said about your sense of humor."
    Mother walked over and brushed the whitewash out of what was left of his hair.

Chapter 12
The Rena

    Dad acquired the Rena to reward us for learning to swim. She was a catboat, twenty feet long and almost as wide. She was docile, dignified, and ancient.
    Before we were allowed aboard the Rena, Dad delivered a series of lectures about navigation, tides, the magnetic compass, seamanship, rope-splicing, right-of-way, and nautical terminology. Radar still had not been invented. It is doubtful if, outside the Naval Academy at Annapolis, any group of Americans ever received a more thorough indoctrination before setting foot on a catboat.
    Next followed a series of dry runs, on the front porch of The Shoe. Dad, sitting in a chair and holding a walking stick as if it were a tiller, would bark out orders while maneuvering his imaginary craft around a tricky harbor.
    We'd sit in line on the floor along side of him, pretending we were holding down the windward rail. Dad would tub imaginary spray out of his eyes, and scan the horizon for possible sperm whale, Flying Dutchmen, or floating ambergris.
    "Great Point Light off the larboard bow," he'd bark. "Haul In the sheet and we'll try to dear her on this tack."
    He'd ease the handle of the cane over toward the imaginary leeward rail, and two of us would haul in an imaginary rope.
    "Steady as she goes," Dad would command. "Make her..."fast."
    We'd make believe twist the rope around a cleet.
    "Coming about," he'd shout "Low bridge. Ready about, hard a'lee."
    This time he'd push the cane handle all the way over toward the leeward side. We'd dude our heads and then scramble across the porch to man the opposite rail.
    "Now we'll come up and pick up our mooring. You do that at the end of every sail. Good sailors always make the mooring on the first try. Landlubbers sometimes have to go around three or four times before they can catch it."
    He'd stand up in the stem, the better to squint at the imaginary mooring.
    "Now. Let go your sheet, Bill. Stand by the centerboard, Mart. Up on the bow with the boat hook, Anne and Ernestine, and mind you grab that mooring. Stand by the throat, Frank. Stand by the peak, Fred...
    We'd scurry around the porch going through our duties, until at last Dad was satisfied his new crew was ready for the high seas.
    Dad was never happier than when aboard the Rena. From the moment he climbed into our dory to row out to Rends mooring, his personality changed. On the Rena, we were no longer his flesh and blood, but a crew of landlubberly scum shanghaied