“The thing is not to let them take advantage,” She explained. “They’ve been spoiled so, it’s going to take a lot of managing, but it’s just like I told Dr. Turner when I found out how spoiled he was. ‘Your mother may have let you spill your ashes all over the floor, but she’s dead now, and if you are set on smoking you take it right out to the garage where it belongs.’ You have to let ’em know where you stand right at the start.”

In spite of this statement, Mrs. Idah Willard’s “stand” was so elaborate, and involved so many contingencies, that her new family despaired of ever getting it straight. First, they were to stay out of the house except for sleeping and eating. Second, they were not to sit out on the lawn mooning where everybody could see them, nor were they to go visiting relatives or school friends or have them call. They were not to use their school paper for games, because it cost money, nor were they to keep reading in their school readers for fun after their lesson was learned. They were to make themselves useful, instead of ornamental, but on the other hand She’d rather do all the housework herself than have them singing songs while they made beds or washed dishes. Their duties were to pick up scraps on the front lawn, tend to Minelda, and run errands. They were not to go places where townspeople would talk about their ragged clothes, but they were not allowed to use their sewing boxes either, because needles and thread cost money. They might sit in the old carriage barn, but they were to just sit there, not pretend they were riding or indeed pretend any other kind of nonsense, and if they tracked in mud when they came in to supper She would straighten them out. The “straightening out” was unpleasant, since She was so small She had to resort to tricks for her force, such as pinching them or cracking their heads with her diamond ring. Marcia found a handsome silver-tasseled little whip in the street after the circus parade, and this She at once appropriated, saying grimly as She locked it in the closet, “You’ll get your whip when you ask for it.” When Marcia stiffly refused to react to her whippings, She complained to Papa that he would have to punish the girls, since they were so wayward they wouldn’t even cry. Florrie had croup and She tied a coal-oil bandage around her neck which burned her fearfully all night. Marcia and Lena sat up all night thinking maybe Florrie would die of pain but they were afraid to call out or tell Papa because they were sure this was part of Her plan. In the morning, She took off the bandage and when the skin came off with it She tittered, “My goodness, I forgot to put Vaseline on first.” There was no use telling these things to Papa, because She always told him something else first, and as he often said, it looked like his sister-in-law, Lois, was putting the kids up to mischief just to spoil the first break he’d ever had. She was afraid to whip Lena, however, since Lena threatened to tell Mr. Carson’s daughter, Barbara. Lena was pretty independent, and all She could do was grind her teeth when Lena did as she pleased. Lena wouldn’t come straight home from school, because she was organizing an exclusive after-school group of three into the Buckeye Girls Sewing and Secret Society. The organization didn’t have anything to sew so they changed the name to B.L.G. (Buckeye Lark Girls), a purely pleasure club. Some boys found out the secret meaning of B.L.G., so the club met again to change its name to U.K.U.K. (U-Know-Us-Kids).