Of all these females, Rolanda, Aileen, Grace, Norma and Annie, only two month-old Annie was currently making sense to Bert Baxter. That was because she was a baby, and not yet a female in the baffling sense of the word. His other three daughters had had their turns, but as they emerged from infanthood into childhood they became unmistakable girl-children almost with their first mama-papa lisps, and thereby removed themselves from Baxter's realm of fathomable human beings.
He lay sleepless one November night beside the gently snoring Rolanda, debating the wisdom of having induced her to try once more to provide him with a son. Although Rolanda was forty at the time, Annie had arrived without undue trouble, fitted immediately into the Baxter feminine regime and established herself in Bert's heart quite solidly, if only temporarily.
The misgivings that beset him were vague ones. Annie was the apple of his eye, but in a few short months she would add to the flooding tide of womanhood that swirled through his house, squealing, giggling, moping, hair-curling, nylon-rinsing, plucking, powdering, painting, primping, ironing, sweater-trading, lipstick-snitching and man-baiting.
Too soon—much too soon—dear, understandable little Annie would move off in her own miasma of perfume and verbal nonsense, leaving Bertrand once again a lonely man in his crowded home.
The illuminated dial said precisely two o'clock when a tiny whimper seeped through the adjacent wall from the nursery. Baxter was on the verge of slipping into a doze, but it brought his eyes open.
The two o'clock feeding!
He loved Annie dearly, but it was high time she was omitting the late feeding. It meant rousing Rolanda, who never heard the call. It meant lights and commotion, short tempers, bottle-banging in the kitchen. It meant disturbing the other girls, which occasioned a slipper-shuffling parade to the bathroom with attendant flushing, tap-turning, glass-rattling and ostentatious whispering that turned the hall into a rustling snake-pit.
Don't wake daddy! He has to get up early.
Indeed daddy had to get up early if he hoped to enjoy his shower in peace in the stocking-strewn bathroom.
"Go to sleep, Annie," Baxter said in the deep recesses of his mind. "Go to sleep, my darling," he urged gently. "Please don't start the circus! Let me rest. Go to sleep, my darling."