But the adjustment to good fortune is sometimes as hard to make as the adjustment to bad fortune. Anxious as they were to live up to the new standard, there seemed to be not one single thing they could do to suit their new mother. They didn’t even know why it was wrong, because she just stood shaking her head in despair and sometimes throwing up her hands as if there was no coping with such stupidity. They didn’t open or shut doors right, they walked on their heels instead of their toes, they wiped their hands on their napkins or else they didn’t, they sat on the bed, they sat on the chairs, they sang till the place sounded like bedlam, they went around in old clothes, looking like perfect little tramps and shaming their elders, or else they wanted to wear their best clothes and ruin them. Efforts to do right in the face of these confused complaints seemed hopeless, and even Papa was unsympathetic. Coming home at night beaming with his new triumphs, he was righteously annoyed to be brought down to earth by his wife’s complaints about his children.

“I’m surprised at you girls,” he scolded. “I got a fine new home for you, just like your own mother always wanted for you, and you don’t know how to act right. You don’t say ‘thank you’ and you don’t mind. If you don’t try to behave yourselves, I’ll send you off some place, I swear. You got to learn to appreciate what people are trying to do for you. Lena, you’re the oldest. I’m going to count on you to keep the others toeing the mark. You’re growing up and it’s time you learned how to be ladies.”

But it was Lena who made the first big mistake. She was anxious to be the new mama’s pet, so she earnestly tried to ingratiate herself by relating the defects of her younger sisters with gloomy prophecies of what would become of them if they didn’t follow her own example. She said that Marcia did not wear her galoshes or mittens and hid them in a tree trunk on her way to school, and that in the school cloakroom she rouged her face with red crepe paper. She said that Florrie was always dragging around a dirty kitten named Snowball and hiding it in the bedroom until she, Lena, was afraid they’d all catch the mange from it. She was afraid they’d catch croup from the sick chicken Florrie had carried around for a day or two, too. The new Mrs. Willard approved of Lena’s helpful information and instructed her to punish these misdemeanors if they came up again. Heady with power, Lena brought Mary Evelyn home one day to show off the house, taking care to do so when she thought no one was around, so she could take her in the front door.

“This is the parlor,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Twenty-two by thirty.”