Cheaper by the Dozen

girl. Do I know her?"
    "I don't believe so," Ernestine whispered. "She doesn't even wear a teddy. And if you don't believe me..."
    "I know," Dad blushed again. "And it still won't be necessary."
    He picked up one of the stockings and slipped his hand into it.
    "You might as well go bare-legged as to wear these. You can see right through them. It's like the last of the seven veils. And those arrows at the bottom—why do they point in that direction?"
    "Those aren't arrows, Daddy," Anne said. "They're clocks. And it seems to me that you're going out of your way to find fault with them."
    "Well, why couldn't the hands of the clock have stopped at quarter after three or twenty-five of five, instead of six o'clock?"
    "Be sensible, Daddy," Anne begged him. "You don't want us to grow up to be wallflowers, do you?"
    "I'd a lot rather raise wallflowers than clinging vines or worse. The next thing I know you'll be wanting to paint."
    "Everybody uses make-up nowadays," Ern said. "They don't call it painting any more."
    "I don't care what they call it," Dad roared. "I'll have no painted women in this house. Get that straight. The bare-teddies and six o'clock stockings are all right, I guess, but no painting, do you understand?"
    "Yes, Daddy."
    "And no high heels or pointed toes. I'm not going to have a lot of doctor's bills because of foot troubles."
    Anne and Ernestine decided that half a loaf was better than none, and that they had better wait until Dad got used to the silk stockings and short skirts before they pressed the make-up and shoe question.
    But it turned out that Dad had given all the ground he intended to, and the girls found Mother a weak reed on which to lean.
    "Neither my sisters nor I have ever used face powder," Mother told Anne and Ernestine, when they asked her to intervene in their behalf. "Frankly girls, I consider it non-essential."
    "Don't tell me you'd rather see a nose full of freckles!"
    "At least that looks natural. And when it comes to the matter of high heels, I don't see how your father can be expected to travel around the world talking about eliminating fatigue, while you girls are fatiguing yourself with high-heel shoes." Dad kept a sharp lookout for surreptitious painting, and was especially suspicious whenever one of the girls looked particularly pretty.
    "What's got into you tonight?" he'd ask, sniffing the air for traces of powder or perfume.
    Ernestine, after playing outside most of the afternoon, came to supper one evening with flushed cheeks.
    "Come over here, young lady," Dad yelled. "I warned you about painting. Let me take a look at you. I declare, you girls pay no more attention to me than if I were a cigar store Indian. A man's got to wear grease in his hair and gray flannel trousers to get any attention in this house nowadays."
    "I haven't got on make-up, Daddy."
    "You haven't eh? Don't think you can fool me. And don't think I'm fooling you when I tell you you've just about painted your way into that convent."
    "The one with the twelve-foot wall, or the one with the ten-foot wall?" Ern asked.
    "Don't be impudent." He pulled out a handkerchief and held a corner of it out to Ern. "Spit on that."
    He took the wet part of the handkerchief, rubbed her cheeks and examined it.
    "Well, Ernestine," he said after a minute. "I see that it isn't rouge, and I apologize. But it might have been, and I won't have it, do you hear?"
    Dad prided himself on being able to smell perfume as soon as he walked into a room, and on being able to pick the offender out of a crowd.
    "Ernestine, are you the one we have to thank for that smell?" he asked. "Good Lord. It smells like a French... like a French garbage can."
    "What smell, Daddy?"
    "By jingo, don't tell me you're indulging in perfume now!"
    "Why not, Daddy? Perfume isn't painting or make-up. And it smells so good!"
    "Why not? Because it stinks up good fresh air, that's why not. Now go up and wash that stuff off before I come up and wash it off for you. Don't you know what men think when they smell perfume on a woman?"
    "All I know is what one man thinks," Ernestine complained. "And he thinks I should wash it off."
    "Thinks, nothing," said Dad. "He knows. And he's telling you. Now get moving."
    Clothes remained a subject of considerable friction, but the matter that threatened to affect Dad's stability was jazz. Radios were innocuous, being still in the catwhisker and headphone stage, and featuring such stimulating programs as the Arlington Time