Someone to watch over me

good daddy, always telling jokes and tickling the kids. And now he’s so grouchy and angry, the children hide from him in the evenings. This is the sort of life Edith might hear about but never understand.”
    She suddenly looked embarrassed at having revealed so much about her family.
    “Now I must be off. I want to catch those hobo girls before they discover what’s under the turnip foliage and steal those as well.”
    Phoebe and Lily trudged along, dispirited by what Roxanne had said. “I never thought I’d say this,“ Lily said quietly, “but right now I’m glad I don’t have an out-of-work husband and sad, frightened children.“
    “Me too,“ Phoebe admitted. “It’s hard enough to keep my own spirits up most of the time without being responsible for propping up a whole family.“
    “Tell me a little about Ruby,“ Lily said. “She looks very young to be having a second baby.“
    “I don’t know her well,“ Phoebe said, “but I know the family she married into. They’ve been around here forever. They had a big house, and a lot of land and grew hops for the breweries, so Prohibition destroyed them before the rest of us. They started growing corn and wheat, but they aren’t much good at it. There are five boys. Ruby married the youngest one. The older ones aren’t married—for good reason; no one would have them. Ruby and her husband can’t afford a house of their own, so they live with his tartar of a mother, his father, and the other four boys in a tiny house the Heggans had to move to when they sold the big one.“
    “How awful for her,“ Lily said.
    “Louis, Ruby’s husband, seems to be a nice enough boy, but the others are big-mouthed drunken louts. They’re always in trouble. They almost burned down Mabel’s Cafe last year. Claimed they couldn’t remember what inspired them.“
    “Poor Ruby. And another baby on the way.“ Phoebe blushed again and said, “I don’t know how they managed it in that household.“ Lily laughed. “I wonder about that too.“
    “The last time we met, Ruby told us that Louis was talking about borrowing money from some- one and getting an old car to go to California. He thinks everybody’s all right out there.
    Lily frowned. “An old car. Across the whole country. With an infant and another on the way. I’d be terrified.“
    “Ruby is. But maybe the news about the new baby on the way will make Louis cool his heels.“
    “Or take off on his own,“ Lily said, without even thinking.
    “I think that might be what really scares Ruby,“ Phoebe replied. “So many men have just disappeared when things got too bad. And they call us the weaker sex.”
    Chapter 4
    Lily and Phoebe chatted until they got to Phoebe’s hat shop, then Lily took a look at the butcher’s for Mrs. Prinney, who hoped against hope there would be a pork roast going begging. There wasn’t one. Putting off the long trudge back up the hill, Lily stopped in at Jack Summer’s office.
    Jack was the brash young editor who’d been selected to replace the former editor at Lily and Robert’s urging. Jack knew their Great-uncle Horatio had owned the paper and assumed Lily and Robert were now the owners. Few people knew the truth.
    Great-uncle Horatio had made their inheritance of his many businesses, the property, gold, cash, flamboyant Duesenberg Model J Derham Tourster that Robert so loved, and even the mansion Lily and Robert lived in, conditional on their staying there for ten years and earning their own living. That was why they had renamed the place Grace and Favor, after the benefices of old. Lily and Robert had been spoiled society brats when their father lost his fortune and committed suicide, leaving his children with practically nothing but eight hundred dollars and their mother’s pier glass, two trunks, and a suitcase apiece for their personal belongings—mainly clothing, letters, and mementos—and no commercial skills at all.
    Mr. Prinney, the executor of the estate, had the onerous job of seeing to it that they fulfilled the conditions of the will, which was one of the reasons he and his wife had moved into the mansion with them. He acted as their jailer, boarder, adviser, and attorney and had gradually become a friend to them as well.
    Lately, Lily wondered if keeping this a secret had been a good idea. At first both brother and sister had been embarrassed by the restriction. It showed them up as formerly useless ornaments with no talents other than social ones.