During the evening Grandpa listened for a while silently then disappeared. The girls were pleased with this new life in the house and the change in their stepmother. Vance was taken with Lena, ogling her with open admiration. He called her “Blondie” and pinched her cheeks. He held Minelda on his lap until she dampened it, a crisis that brought an angry oath to his lips and resulted in Minelda being dumped wailing on the floor.

“My best gray suit,” he said reproachfully, shaking his head. “I got two others but this is my best. Always wear gray ’cause it don’t show the dander like blue.”

The episode brought an end to the gala evening and reminded Her that the girls had been neglected in discipline, so they were sent off to bed with instructions not to horse around up there and bring the house down.

“How about me and Lena taking a little walk first?” Vance asked, but his sister said, a little sharply, that Lena was no age to be going walking with boys, especially a grown man of twenty-six.

After the first excitement of the new arrival, the family settled down to normal; that is, She made it clear that Vance’s freedom with the house was no reason for the others to follow suit. He had a front door key and sometimes when he came in late at night he even brought company with him. They could be heard rattling around the kitchen, eating snacks. When Papa heard this he would go to the head of the stairs in his nightshirt and roar down, “What’s going on down there? That you, Vance? Can’t you let people sleep, damn it?” This would wake up the rest of the house. Minelda would start bawling and asking for a drink of water, or her teddy bear, or the washcloth she chewed herself to sleep on. Her mother would protest that Harry mustn’t be too hard on Vance; he was just a kid. Papa would say kid, nothing; at twenty-six he himself was raising a family. The girls would sit up in bed, whispering conjectures about what Vance was up to, and morning would find everybody sullen or irascible.

Vance brought presents to Lena, and could not, as he himself cheerfully confessed, keep his hands off her. He went to dances in Lesterville and brought her souvenirs from there, and heart-shaped candy boxes tied with big blue satin bows. He even asked her to go with him to dances, but Papa wouldn’t allow it, much as Lena wanted to go. But he got them in trouble by inviting them to come in the parlor. His sister came in one day and found Florrie playing “Glow Worm,” taught her by Mrs. Gross, while Vance taught Lena the schottische, with the carpet rolled up. As might have been expected, Vance did not take any blame for this outrage, but watched with a shrug while his sister hustled the girls out of the room, Florrie by the ear.