Cheaper by the Dozen

"Sure, I know it. Wasn't it a scream?"
    "No," said Mother. "It wasn't."
    "It's these dusters we have to wear," Anne almost wept. "It's these damned, damned dusters. They look just like uniforms."
    "Honestly, Daddy," said Ernestine, "it's so embarrassing to go riding when you always make these awful scenes."
    The crowd was bigger than ever now.
    "I," said Martha, "feel like Lady Godiva."
    Mother was upset, but not too upset to reprimand Anne for swearing. Dad started to shake with laughter, and the crowd started laughing, too.
    "That's a good one," somebody shouted. "Lady Godiva. You tell him, Sis. Lady Godiva!"
    The boys began showing off. Bill sat on the top of the back seat as if he were a returning hero being cheered by a welcoming populace. He waved his hat aloft and bowed graciously to either side, with a fixed, stagey smile on his face. Frank and Fred swept imaginary ticker tape off his head and shoulders. But the girls, crimson-faced, dived under the lap robe. "Get down from there, Bill," said Mother.
    Dad was still roaring. "I just don't understand you girls," he wheezed. "That's the funniest thing I ever heard in my life. An orphanage on wheels. And me the superintendent. Gilbreth's Retreat for the Red-Haired Offspring of Unwed but Repentant Reprobates."
    "Not humorous," said Mother. "Let's get out of here." As we passed through the outskirts of Hartford, Dad was subdued and repentant; perhaps a little frightened.
    "I didn't mean any harm, Lillie," he said.
    "Of course you didn't, dear. And there's no harm done." But Ernestine wasn't one to let an advantage drop.
    "Well, we're through with the dusters," she announced from the back seat. "We'll never wear them again. Never again. Quoth the raven, and I quoth, ‘Nevermore,' and I un-quoth."
    Dad could take it from Mother, but not from his daughters. "Who says you're through with the dusters?" he howled. "Those dusters cost a lot of money, which does not grow on grape arbors. And if you think for a minute that..."
    "No, Frank," Mother interrupted. "This time the girls are right. No more dusters."
    It was a rare thing for them to disagree, and we all sat there enjoying it.
    "All right, Lillie," Dad grinned, and everything was all right now. "As I always say, you're the boss. And I unquoth, too."

Chapter 4
Visiting Mrs. Murphy

    Roads weren't marked very well in those days, and Dad never believed in signs anyway.
    "Probably some kid has changed those arrows around," he would say, possibly remembering his own youth. "Seems to me that if we turned that way, the way the arrow says, we'd be headed right back where we came from."
    The same thing happened with the Automobile Blue Book, the tourist's bible in the early days of the automobile. Mother would read to him:
    "Six-tenths of a mile past windmill, bear left at bride church and follow paved road."
    "That must be the wrong windmill," Dad would say. "No telling when the fellow who wrote that book came over this road to check up on things. My bump of direction tells me to turn right. They must have tom down the windmill the book's talking about."
    Then, after he'd turned right and gotten lost, he'd blame Mother for giving him the wrong directions. Several times, he called Anne up to the front seat to read the Blue Book for him.
    "Your Mother hasn't a very good sense of direction," he'd say loudly, glaring over his pince-nez at Mother. "She tells me to turn left when the book says to turn right. Then she blames me when we get lost. Now you read it to me just like it says. Don't change a single word, understand? And don't be making up anything about windmills that aren't there, or non-existent brick churches, just to confuse me. Read it just like it says."
    But he wouldn't follow Anne's directions, either, and so he'd get lost just the same.
    When things looked hopeless, Dad would ask directions at store or filling station. He'd listen, and then usually drive off to exactly the opposite direction from the one his informant had indicated.
    "Old fool," Dad would mutter. "He's lived five miles from Trenton all his life and he doesn't even know how to get there. He's trying to route me back to New York."
    Mother was philosophical about it. Whenever she considered that Dad was hopelessly lost, she'd open a little portable ice box that she kept on the floor of the car under her feet, and hand Jane her bottle. This was Mother's signal that it was time to have lunch.
    "All right, Lillie," Dad would say. "Guess we might as