After this last monumental step forward, the club sagged into inactivity, till Myrtle Chase’s mother took a kindly interest. She suggested they make it a nice little reading club like her own Century Club. To make it more fun and grown-up they should observe “parliamentary rule,” which they could learn out of her own Roberts’ Rules of Order. After a gloomy session with Mr. Roberts and Mrs. Chase’s copy of Tales of a Wayside Inn, Lena said that if people’s mothers were going to butt in they’d give up the whole project. Just then She got wind of Lena’s secret society and told Papa Lena belonged to a club whose purpose was to read dirty books. Papa’s nerves were ragged from the friction in his family, so he lost his temper and ordered Lena to come right home after school instead of getting herself talked about with her dirty books. Lena indignantly confided this to Mary Evelyn, who eagerly asked where you got those “dirty books” and that was a fine idea for a club, much better than Mrs. Chase’s. They decided, after pondering the matter, that if Lena’s stepmother knew so much about them she must have some. This incited Lena to further daring. She stole the house keys again and after earnest prowling discovered a book in her stepmother’s bureau drawer called Sex Talks. She sneaked this out with palpitating heart, and soon had a much larger reading club than Mrs. Chase had anticipated. Since any type of reading was a chore for Lena’s group, and this book was full of big words, they were only kept going by the conviction that anything hidden must be worthwhile. Besides, at last they had a secret. Finally, She discovered the secret, and this time Lena was whipped reluctantly by Papa at Her insistence. He was mad at Her, though, afterward, and went out alone that night, slamming the door. When he came home, the girls heard him coming upstairs on his hands and knees, and they heard Her crying out, “Oh, Harry, you’ve been drinking! You can’t even walk upstairs.”

“I can walk upstairs if I want to, goddamn it,” shouted Papa. “Anybody can walk upstairs, but this is the way I like to go upstairs, and this is the way I’m going to do it.”

All of these domestic upsets grieved Papa.