“The Hunkies wouldn’t pay their bill because they said they was bedbugs,” Lena amplified. “Grandma got the policemen after them but they got away. Then we found the nits, so we have to shake the sheets hard when we make the bed.”

“Grandma and Mrs. M. put gasoline on the mattress,” Marcia added happily. “Now it smells like gasoline all night.”

This brought a look of deep annoyance to their father’s face. He got up and paced up and down the kitchen, stroking his chin.

“How long are we going to stay here? Are we going to go back to London Junction? When are we going back to school? Are you going to live with us?”

Their father threw his hands up impatiently at this flood of questions.

“Never mind, I’ll get a housekeeper myself, if your own flesh and blood can’t look after you any better,” he vowed. “You kids need looking after. I’m surprised at your grandmother. You ought to be in school. By George, it’s a goddamn shame you can’t trust anybody to do the right thing! Mind you, keep on saying your prayers every night, even if you don’t go to Sunday school, and don’t forget God bless Mama.”

They asked him where his guitar was and if he wouldn’t sing something. The guitar was at the Friends’, he said, and he didn’t have time to sing right now, for he was up to his ears in work. He had to do the work of ten, he said, because Mr. Carson depended utterly on him to keep the business going. They were cudgeling their brains to think of other intimate details of life at Grandma’s when he patted their heads abruptly and sauntered out to the porch. They heard him out there in a quick change of mood joshing Mrs. M. and Mrs. B. He wanted to know what a couple of good-looking women like them were doing without half a dozen fellows hanging around, and had they heard the new one about the drummer and the chorus girl? Mrs. M. and Mrs. B. could be heard chuckling with the special secret kind of laughter that follows a special kind of joke, until Mrs. M. cried out coyly for him to stop before they died laughing.

“Did you hear what Mrs. M. just said to Papa?” Lena whispered later to Marcia in amazement. “She said he had two of the darlingest little girls she’d ever seen and anybody’d be mighty proud to be a second mother to them!”

“Maybe she won’t chase us off the porch after this,” Marcia said hopefully. “Maybe she’ll stop picking on us.”

Listening at every keyhole during their father’s brief talks with Aunt Lois and Grandma, they could not gather what the plans for their future were to be. They did deduce that their grandmother had no intention of keeping them there for good, and that Aunt Lois would let them live with her only on condition that “Harry straightened out and did the right thing.” It seemed they were a big responsibility—not a desirable one, either. They sat on the back-stair steps meditating glumly till bedtime, Marcia getting her cue for gloom from Lena, who scowled and wouldn’t talk.