Cheaper by the Dozen

but he couldn't put any enthusiasm into them, and he finally tossed them down again. Neither he nor Mother could eat anything, and there was an uneasy, guilty silence, punctuated by Anne's sobs.
    "Listen to that poor, heartbroken child," Mother finally said. "Imagine her thinking that no one in the world understands her. Frank, I think you were too hard on her."
    Dad put his head in his hands. "Maybe I was," he said. "Maybe I was. Personally, I don't have anything much against bobbed hair. Like Ernestine says, it's more efficient. But when I saw how upset it made you, I lost my temper, I guess."
    "I don't have anything against bobbed hair either," Mother said. "It certainly would eliminate a lot of brushing and combing. But I knew you didn't like it, and..."
    Anne appeared at dessert time, red-eyed and disheveled. Without a word she sat down and picked up her knife and fork. Minutes later, she smiled enchantingly.
    "That was good," she said, passing her plate. "If you don't mind, Mother, I'll have another helping of everything. I'm positively starved tonight."
    "I don't mind, dear," said Mother.
    "I like to see girls eat," said Dad.
    That weekend, Mother took the girls down to Dad's barber shop in the Claridge Building in Montclair.
    "I want you to trim this one's hair, please," she said, pointing to Anne, "and to bob the hair of the others."
    "Any special sort of bob, Mrs. Gilbreth?" the barber asked. "No. No, I guess just a regular bob," Mother said slowly. "The shorter the better."
    "And how about you, Mrs. Gilbreth?"
    "What about me?"
    "How about your hair?"
    "No, sir," the girls shouted indignantly. "You don't touch a hair on her head. The idea!"
    Mother pretended to consider the suggestion. "I don't know, girls," she smiled. "It might look very chic. And it certainly would be more efficient. What do you think?"
    "I think," said Ernestine, "it would be disgraceful. After all, a mother's a mother, not a silly flapper."
    "I guess not today, thank you," Mother told the barber. "Five bobbed-haired bandits in the family should be enough."

    Having capitulated on the hair question, Dad put up an even sterner resistance against any future changes in dress. But Anne and Ernestine broke him down a little at a time. Anne got a job in the high-school cafeteria, saved her money, and bought silk stockings, two short dresses and four flimsy pieces of underwear known as teddies. These she unwrapped with some ceremony in the living room.
    "I don't want to be a sneak," she said, "so I'm going to show these to everybody right now. If you won't let me wear them at home, I'll change into them on the way to school. I'm never going to wear long underwear again."
    "Oh no you don't," Dad shouted. "Take those things back to the store. It embarrasses me to look at them, and I won't have them in my house."
    He picked up a teddy and held the top of it against his shoulders. It hung down to his belt.

    "You mean that's all the underwear women wear nowadays?" he asked incredulously. "When I think of... well, never mind that. No wonder you read about all those crimes and love nests, like that New Brunswick preacher and the choir singer. Well, you take the whole business right back to the store."
    "No," Anne insisted. "I bought these clothes with my own money and I'm going to wear them. I'm not going to be the only one in the class with long underwear and a flap in the back. It's disgusting."
    "It's not so disgusting as having no back of the underwear to sew a flap on," said Dad. "I just can't believe that everybody in your class wears these teddybear, or bare-teddy things. There must be some sane parents besides your mother and me." He shook his head. But he was weakening.
    "I don't see why you object to teddies," Anne said. "They don't show, you know."
    "Of course they don't show, that's just the trouble. It's what does show that I'm talking about."
    "There's only one other girl in high school besides Anne and me who doesn't wear teddies," Ernestine put in. "If you don't believe us, come to school and see for yourself."
    "That won't be necessary," Dad blushed. "I'm willing to take your word for it."
    "I should say not," said Mother.
    "Aside from the possibility of being arrested for indecent exposure every time they crossed their legs or stood in a breeze," Dad muttered, "I'd think they'd the of pneumonia."
    "Well, I'm glad there's one other sensible girl in school besides you two," Mother said, clutching at a straw. "She sounds like a nice