Cheaper by the Dozen

they are smart. Too damned smart for their breeches. Does that answer your question? As to whether they were aided and abetted in an attempted fraud, I cannot say. But my professional advice is to bear down on them. A good thrashing right now, from the oldest to the youngest, might be just the thing."
    She slammed the front door, and Dad looked glumly at us. "All right," he sighed. "What have you been up to? That woman's going to write a paper on the family. What did you do to her?"
    Anne twitched. Ernestine scratched. Martha bit her nails. Dad was getting angry.
    "Hold still and speak up. No nonsense!"
    "Do you want another baby brother?" Anne asked.
    "Does it hurt when your Mother spanks you?" said Ernestine.
    "When did you have your last bath?" Martha inquired. "Are you sure? Hmmm?"
    Dad raised his hands in surrender and shook his head. He looked old and tired now.
    "Sometimes I don't know if it's worth it," he said. "Why didn't you come and tell your Mother and me about it, if she was asking questions like that. Oh, well...On the other hand...Why the bearded old goat!"
    Dad started to smile.
    "If she writes a paper about any of that I'll sue her foreverything she owns, including her birth certificate. If she has one."
    He opened the door into his office.
    "Come in and give me all the frightful details."
    "After you, Dr. Butler," Ernestine told Lill.
    A few minutes later, Mother came into the office, where we were perched on the edges of her and Dad's desks. The stenographers had abandoned their typewriters and were crowded around us.
    "What's the commotion, Frank?" she asked Dad. "I could hear you bellowing all the way up in the attic."
    "Oh, Lord," Dad wheezed. "Start at the beginning, kids. I want your mother to hear this, too. The bearded old goat—not you, Lillie."

Chapter 16
Over the Hill

    On Friday nights, Dad and Mother often went to a lecture or a movie by themselves, holding hands as they went out to the bam to get Foolish Carriage.
    But on Saturday nights, Mother stayed home with the babies, while Dad took the rest of us to the movies. We had early supper so that we could get to the theater by seven o'clock, in time for the first show.
    "We're just going to stay through one show tonight," Dad told us on the way down. "None of this business about seeing the show through a second time. None of this eleven o'clock stuff. No use to beg me."
    When the movie began, Dad became as absorbed as we, and noisier. He forgot all about us, and paid no attention when we nudged him and asked for nickels to put in the candy vendors on the back of the seats. He laughed so hard at thecomedies that sometimes he embarrassed us and we tried to tell him that people were looking at him. When the feature was sad, he kept trumpeting his nose and wiping his eyes.
    When the lights went on at the end of the first show, we always begged him to change his mind, and let us stay and see it again. He put on an act of stubborn resistance, but always yielded in the end.
    "Well, you were less insolent than usual this week," he said. "But I hate to have you stay up until all hours of the night."
    "Tomorrow's Sunday. We can sleep late."
    "And your mother will give me Hail Columbia when I bring you home late."
    "If you think it's all right, Mother will think it's all right." "Well, all right. We'll make an exception this time. Since your hearts are so set on it, I guess I can sit through it again." Once, after a whispered message by Ernestine had passed along the line, we picked up our coats at the end of the first show and started to file out of the aisle.
    "What are you up to?" Dad called after us in a hurt tone, and loud enough so that people stood up to see what was causing the disturbance. "Where do you think you're going? Do you want to walk home? Come back here and sit down." We said he had told us on the way to the theater that we could just sit through one show that night.
    "Well, don't you want to see it again? After all, you've been good as gold this week. If your hearts are set on it, I guess I could sit through it again. I don't mind, particularly."
    We said we were a little sleepy, that we didn't want to be all tired out tomorrow and that we didn't want Mother to be worried because we had stayed out late.
    "Aw, come on," Dad begged. "Don't be spoil sports. I'll take care of your mother. Let's see it again. The evening's young. Tomorrow's Sunday. You can sleep late."
    We filed smirking back to our seats.
    "You little fiends,"