Cheaper by the Dozen: Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Chapters 15–19

Dad then would catch the eye of a child sitting near the offender and, by signals, would deputize him to carry out the punishment.

Mother disapproved of all forms of corporal punishment.

Skull-rapping and elbow-thumping became a practice in which everybody in the family, except Mother, participated until Dad deemed our table manners satisfactory. Even the youngest child could mete out the punishment without fear of reprisal.

"Daddy, do you think that what Mr. Fremonville is saying is of general interest?” Lill interrupted a long discourse to ask.

Consequently, Aunt Anne stuck courageously to a losing cause for six years, in an unusual display of devotion and fortitude above and beyond the regular call of family duty.

“You do too have a dog,” Aunt Anne said accusingly, while she dried her hand on a napkin. "Speak up now! Who brought that miserable cur into the house?”

When Mother was at home, she made him wear such appurtenances as a coat and a belt.

Aunt Anne sat down with deceptive calm, and gave us a disarming smile.

“From this minute on, pipe down every last one of you, or I’ll lambaste the hides off you. I’ll fix you so you can’t sit down for a month. Do you understand? Does everybody understand? In case you don’t realize it, I’ve had enough!”

She was thin and sallow, with angular features and a black moustache, not quite droopy enough to hide a horsey set of upper teeth.

"Unquestionably, they are smart. Too damned smart for their breeches. Does that answer your question? As to whether they were aided and abetted in an attempted fraud, I cannot say. But my professional advice is to bear down on them. A good thrashing right now, from the oldest to the youngest, might be just the thing.”

"Well, you were less insolent than usual this week," he said.

Dad slapped his knee, folded his arms in front of his face, and rolled his head to the left and right in spasms of mirth.

"Did you say mo’ ’lasses, Mr. Bones?” she squeaked in a querulous falsetto.

"Did you say mo’ ’lasses, Mr. Bones?” she squeaked in a querulous falsetto.

By the time Anne was a senior in high school, Dad was convinced that the current generation of girls was riding, with rouged lips and rolled stockings, straight for a jazzy and probably illicit rendezvous with the greasy-haired devil.

By the time Anne was a senior in high school, Dad was convinced that the current generation of girls was riding, with rouged lips and rolled stockings, straight for a jazzy and probably illicit rendezvous with the greasy-haired devil.

It was the day of the flapper and the sheik, of petting and necking, of flat chests and dimpled knees.

The accepted mode of transportation was the stripped-down Model T Ford, preferably inscribed with such witticisms as "Chicken, Here’s Your Roost,” "Four Wheels, No Brakes” and "The Mayflower—Many a Little Puritan Has Come Across In It.”

If people the world over wanted to go crazy, that was their affair, however lamentable.

Anne appeared at dessert time, red-eyed and disheveled.

Having capitulated on the hair question, Dad put up an even sterner resistance against any future changes in dress.

"Don’t be impudent.”

Radios were innocuous, being still in the catwhisker and headphone stage, and featuring such stimulating programs as the Arlington Time Signals.

The exhaust whistle, coupled with the natural engine noises, precluded the necessity of Mister Scales’ giving any further notice about the car’s arrival at its destination.

Anne’s sheik was wearing a black-and-orange-striped blazer, gray Oxford bags, a bow tie on an elastic band, and a brown triangular porkpie hat, pinched into a bowsprit at the front.

When Dad couldn’t act as chaperone himself, he sent Frank or Bill along as his proxy.

"If you ask me,” Anne told her, “it’s a dead give away to be as suspicious as Daddy. It denotes a misspent youth.”

"Well nobody asked you,” Mother said, "so perhaps you’d better forego any further speculation. It’s not a case of suspicion. Just because other parents won’t face up to their responsibilities is no reason for your father or me to forget ours.”

"Well nobody asked you,” Mother said, "so perhaps you’d better forego any further speculation. It’s not a case of suspicion. Just because other parents won’t face up to their responsibilities is no reason for your father or me to forget ours.”

The point is they’re making a character out of me. They’re setting me up as the meddlesome but harmless old duffer, a kind of big-hearted, well-meaning, asinine, mental eunuch. The boys slap me on the back and the girls pinch me on my cheek and ask me to dance with them.

"The first thing I know you’ll be greasing your hair and wearing one of those yellow slickers,” Mother admonished him with mock severity.

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.”

Frank, Bill and Lill fought gamely against the invasion, but in vain.

"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.”

Ern kept it hidden in a bureau drawer, but no hiding place in our house was any too safe, and the junior-high-school contingent finally discovered it, memorized it, put it to music, and learned a three-part harmony for it.

The next time I see you, I don’t want you casting any appraising glances at my cranium.

The World Power Conference and the International Management Conference were going to meet in eight months in England and Czechoslovakia, respectively.

There was no repose there and no trace left of the laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

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.