Cheaper by the Dozen

had a few minutes before the train left, and he telephoned home to Mother from a pay booth in the station.
    "Say, Boss," he said, "on the way down here I had an idea about saving motions on packing those soapflakes for Lever Brothers. See what you think...."
    Mother heard a thud and the line went silent. She jiggled the receiver hook.
    "I'm sorry," it was the voice of the operator. "The party who called you has hung up."
    Jane, the baby, was two years old. Anne, the oldest, was taking her examinations at Smith, where she was a sophomore.
    It was Saturday morning. The younger children were playing in the yard. Most of the older ones, members of the purchasing committees, were in town doing the marketing. Six or seven neighbors set out in automobiles to round up those who were missing. The neighbors wouldn't say what the trouble was.
    "Your mother wants you home, dear," they told each of us. "There's been an accident. Just slide into the car and I'll drive you home."
    When we arrived at the front of the house, we knew the accident was death. Fifteen or twenty cars were parked in the driveway and on the front lawn. Mother? It couldn't be Mother, because they had said Mother wanted us home. Daddy? Accidents didn't happen to Daddy. Somebody fell off his bicycle and was run over? Maybe. All the girls were terrible bicycle riders. Bill was a good rider but took too many chances.
    We jumped out of the car and ran toward the house. Jackie was sitting on a terrace near the sidewalk. His face was smudged where he had rubbed his hands.
    "Our Daddy's dead," he sobbed.
    Dad was a part of all of us, and a part of all of us died then.
    They dressed him in his Army uniform, and we went in and looked in the coffin. With his eyes closed and his face gone slack, he seemed stern and almost forbidding. There was no repose there and no trace left of the laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
    We thought that when they came after him, Daddy must have given them a real fight. We bet they had their hands full with Daddy.
    Mother found the carbon of the letter to Dad's friend, and the brain went to Harvard. After the cremation, Mother chartered a boat and went out into the Atlantic. Somewhere out there, standing alone in the bow, she scattered his ashes. That was the way Dad wanted it.
    There was a change in Mother after Dad died. A change in looks and a change in manner. Before her marriage, all Mother's decisions had been made by her parents. After the marriage, the decisions were made by Dad. It was Dad who suggested having a dozen children, and that both of them become efficiency experts. If his interests had been in basket weaving or phrenology, she would have followed him just as readily.
    While Dad lived, Mother was afraid of fast driving, of airplanes, of walking alone at night. When there was lightning, she went in a dark closet and held her ears. When things went wrong at dinner, she sometimes burst into tears and had to leave the table. She made public speeches, but she dreaded them.
    Now, suddenly, she wasn't afraid any more, because there was nothing to be afraid of. Now nothing could upset her because the thing that mattered most had been upset. None of us ever saw her weep again.
    It was two days after Dad's death, and the house still smelled of flowers. Mother called a meeting of the Family Council. It seemed natural now for her to sit at Dad's place in the chairman's chair, with a pitcher of ice water at her right.
    Mother told us that there wasn't much money—most of it had gone back into the business. She said she had talked by telephone with her mother, and that her mother wanted all of us to move out to California.
    Anne interrupted to say she planned to leave college anyway and get a job. Ernestine, who had graduated from high school the night before Dad died, said she didn't care anything about college either.
    "Please wait until I'm finished," Mother said, and there was a new note of authority in her voice. "There is another alternative, but it hinges on your being able to take care of yourselves. And it would involve some sacrifices from all of us. So I want you to make the decision.
    "I can go ahead with your father's work. We can keep the office open here. We can keep the house, but we would have to let the cook go."
    "Tom, too?" we asked. "We couldn't let Tom go, could we? He wouldn't go anyway."
    "No, not Tom. But we would have to sell the car and live very simply. Still we could be together. And Anne would go