Cheaper by the Dozen

the sisters see to it that the girls are in bed by nine o'clock. I think that's better than the one at Boston. The wall of the Boston one is only ten feet high."
    The so-called cootie garages, which Anne and Ernestine now detested, had been the style several years before, and still were worn by girls who hadn't bobbed their hair. The long hair was pulled forward and tied into two droppy pugs which protruded three or four inches from each ear. If a girl didn'thave enough hair to do the trick, she used rags, rats, or switches to fill up the insides of the ear muffs.
    Anne decided that she could never get Dad's permission to dress like the other girls in her class, and that it was up to her to take matters into her own hands. She felt a certain amount of responsibility to Ernestine and the younger girls, since she knew they would never be emancipated until she paved the way. She had a haunting mental picture of Jane, fifteen years hence, still wearing pugs over her ears, long winter drawers, and heavy ribbed stockings.
    "Convent, here I come," she told Ern. "I mean the Albany convent with the twelve-foot wall."
    She disappeared into the girls' bathroom with a pair of scissors. When she emerged, her hair was bobbed and shingled up the back. It wasn't a very good-looking job, but it was good and short. She tiptoed, unnoticed, into Ernestine's room.
    "How do I look?" she asked. "Do you think I did a good job?"
    "Good Lord," Ernestine screamed. "Get out of here. It might be catching."
    "I'll catch it when Dad gets a hold of me, I know that. But how does it look?"
    "I didn't know any human head of hair could look like that," Ernestine said. "I like bobbed hair, but yours looks like you backed into a lawn-mower. My advice is to start all over again, and this time let the barber do it."
    "You're not much help," Anne complained. "After all, I did it as much for you as for me."
    "Well, don't do anything like that for me again. I'm not worth it. It's too big a sacrifice to expect you to go around like that until the end of your days, which I suspect are numbered."
    "You're going to back me up, aren't you, when Dad sees it? After all, you want to bob your hair, don't you?"
    "I'll back you up," said Ern, "to the hilt. But I don't want to bob my hair. I want a barber to bob it for me. What I'm wondering is who's going to back up Dad. Somebody had better be there to catch him."
    "I have a feeling," Anne said, "that I'm in for a fairly disagreeable evening. Oh, well, somebody had to do it, and I'm the oldest."
    They sat in Ernestine's room until supper time, and then went downstairs together. Mother was serving the plates, and dropped peas all over the tablecloth.
    "Anne," she whispered. "Your beautiful hair. Oh, oh, oh. Just look at yourself."
    "I have looked at myself," Anne said. "Please don't make me look at myself again. I don't want to spoil my appetite."
    Mother burst into tears. "You've already spoiled mine," she sobbed.
    Dad hadn't paid any attention when Anne and Ernestine entered the dining room.
    "What's the trouble now?" he asked. "Can't we have a little peace and quiet around here for just one meal? All I ask is..." He saw Anne and choked.
    "Go back upstairs and take that thing off," he roared. "And don't you ever dare to come down here looking like that again. The idea! Scaring everybody half to death and making your Mother cry. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
    "It's done, Daddy," Anne said. "I'm afraid we're all going to have to make the best of it. The moving finger bobs, and having bobbed, moves on."
    "I think it looks snakey," Ern hastened to do her duty to her older sister. "And listen, Daddy, it's ever so much more efficient. It takes me ten minutes to fix these pugs in the morning, and Anne can fix her hair now in fifteen seconds."
    "What hair?" Dad shouted. "She doesn't have any hair to fix."
    "How could you do this to me?" Mother sobbed.
    "How could she do it to an Airedale, let alone to herself or you and me?" said Dad. "The Scarlet Letter. How Hester won her 'A.' Well, I won't have it, do you understand? I want your hair grown back in and I want it grown back in fast. Do you hear me?"
    Anne had tried to keep up a bold front, but the combined attack was too much and she burst into tears.
    "Nobody in this family understands me," she sobbed. "I wish I were dead."
    She ran from the table. We heard her bedroom door slam, and muffled, heartbroken sobs.
    Dad reached over and picked up his convent catalogues,