"Something like that," Tom admitted. "Oh, I know that's probably a foolish thought. In fact, now that I look at it, I know it is. The guy just impressed me; frankly I came out feeling somewhat awed by him. I'm not used to the feeling. I guess it's just that he comes from a background that I don't know anything about."
Sandy pursed her lips and nodded. There was a pixyish gleam to her eyes as she got up and started towards the door. As she left she asked him: "And Marcia, is she anything like her old man?" She was out the door and gone before he realized what her question meant.
He sat there, staring after her for five full minutes before he got up and started to put the food away.
3
HE HAD put the food away and prepared himself a cup of coffee, when he heard the clatter of the bus. That would be Betsy and Rita with the kids, he knew, back from the beach. By the noisy commotion, he gathered they had enjoyed themselves, with no more than the usual number of cuts and bruises and hurt feelings. Eleven kids, the oldest eight years, could not conceivably go to the beach for the afternoon without some crises; but, at least, they seemed to have gotten back in a happy condition.
Tom smiled as he thought of them, picturing the throng, but he made no move to join them. When Sue, aged four, stuck her head in the door and grinned to see him there, he just said "Hi." This she took as an invitation, and hopped on in to begin telling him in disconnected fragments, all about the day. He let her ramble for a moment until the first flush of her enthusiasm was over. Then, with a kiss on the forehead and a poke in the stomach, he sent her out, suggesting that she tell him all about it later.
When she had gone, he sat there, thinking about the girl. Sue was very much like her mother, Polly. Dark-haired with light bones, she had the quick and easy movements of a born dancer. And her eyes sparkled with dancing lights. Sue, like Polly, was a born flirt, but a flirt out of sheer interest in life. She was so much the image of her mother, both in face and build and also temperament, that he wondered who her father was. Certainly there was not much of any of the men visible in her.
What would Marcia mean to the children? With a start he came back to his problem. There was nothing apparent of the maternal instinct in her. But then, neither was there in Joan, either; and Joan was a perfectly good member of the clan.
Oh, sometimes they laughed at Joan for being much too serious about her part. She was the artist and the self-acknowledged arbiter of good taste, the monitor of the proper way. She was the gracious hostess when visitors were at hand. To her the clan had conceded the job of deciding the arrangement of the rooms. To her the girls turned for advice in how to dress. And her advice was good. With some real though limited talent as an artist, she had the touch of instinct, the sense of rightness, and the drive to be unsatisfied with anything but what was right. And she, conceding that children were necessary and even desirable in their places, still deplored the havoc they could wreak. She was not a good manager of the children.