Cheaper by the Dozen

Coney Island or something." He looked at his watch. "I'm going to have to put some more Neatsfoot oil on the clutch. I'll have the car out front in exactly twelve minutes." Libby and Anne both threw their arms around his neck.
    "I never thought he'd do it," Anne said.
    "I told you he'd say yes," Libby grinned. "Mr. Gilbreth, you're a sweet old duck." She planted a kiss on his cheek, leaving two red, lipsticked smears.
    The girls rushed out of the dining room to get ready, and Dad rolled his eyes.
    "Well, Lillie," he said to Mother, "I guess my springchicken days are over. When you start getting pecks on the cheek from your daughters' friends, you're on the decline."
    "The first thing I know you'll be greasing your hair and wearing one of those yellow slickers," Mother admonished him with mode severity. "Better wash the lipstick off your face before you go out, sheik."
    Dad grinned vacantly, and walked so that his pants cuffs swished like Oxford bags.
    "I'm going out and take the fenders off Foolish Carriage," he said. "Four Wheels, No Brakes. The Tin You Love to Touch."

    Frank, Bill and Lillian, still in junior high school, resented the infiltration of the high school romeos. What they objected to principally was that the three oldest girls were being turned away from family activities. Anne, Ernestine, and Martha had less and less time for family games, for plays, and skits. It was the inevitable prelude to growing up. It was just a few bars, if you please, professor, of that sentimental little ditty entitled "Those Wedding Bells Are Breaking up That Old Gang of Mine." Marriage was still in the distant future, but the stage was being set
    Anne already had had her first proposal. Joe Scales had asked her to marry him. They were sitting in a hammock on the side porch when he popped the question. The porch was separated by French doors from the parlor and by windows from the office. Frank, Bill and Lillian, lying flat on the parlor floor and peeking through the doors, bore witness to the proposal and to Anne's none-too-original rejection.
    "I like to think of you as a brother," she told Scales.
    "A fine thing!" Frank whispered to Bill. "Imagine thinking of that wet smack in terms of us."
    "You caught me," Scales told Anne. "I went for you, hook, line and sinker. What are you going to do with me?" Anne was touched by this show of slavish devotion. "What am I going to do with you?" she echoed dramatically.
    "Throw him back," Dad roared from the other side of the office window. "He's too small to keep."
    Frank, Bill and Lill fought gamely against the invasion, butin vain. More effective, although unpremeditated, were the obstacles erected by the four little boys, Fred, Dan, Jack, and Bob, who kept running in and out of the rooms where the older girls were entertaining their callers.
    "I'm living through what can only be described as a hell on earth," Anne moaned to Mother. "It's impossible to entertain at home with that troop of four berserk little boys. Something drastic has got to be done about them."
    "What's the matter with them?"
    "They're in and out of the porch all evening. Up in my lap, up in my friend's lap, under the hammock, over the hammock, in and out, up and down, over and under, until I'm about to go daft."
    "Well, what do you suggest, dear?"
    "Tie them down."
    At the end of one particular evening, Anne became almost hysterical.
    "I'm fed up to the eyeballs with that button brigade," she sobbed. "They're driving me screaming, screeching mad. How can you expect any boy to get into a romantic mood when you have to button and unbutton all evening?"
    "They're not supposed to get into romantic moods," Dad said. "That's just what we don't want around here."
    Anne paid no attention to him. "It's 'Andy, unbutton me, I have to get undressed.' It's 'Andy button me up, I'm cold.' It's 'Andy, it's three o'clock in the button factory.' I tell you, Mother, it's just too much of a handicap to endure. You're going to have to do something about it, unless you want all your daughters to be old maids."
    "You're right," Mother conceded. "I'll do my best to keep them upstairs the next time you have company. I wonder what four sets of leg irons would cost?"
    The opposition of Frank, Bill and Lill was less subtle.
    "You want to speak to Martha?" Frank would say in an incredulous voice when one of her sheiks would telephone. You're absolutely sure? You haven't got her mixed up with somebody else? You mean Martha Gilbreth, the one