# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 61

AT first, gloom brooded over the small Marceys. Something portentous had happened. Jove was angry. Laurie bounced around the kitchen saying, "Poor lambs, I'll take care of them, myself." Their grandmother seemed to be kinder and more comprehending of childhood than one had ever known her to be. As for Alice, she made no sign. She went on a disturbingly even way. It was Robert who came to her to learn the precise details of the case.
"Are you going out to dinner to-night?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Alice.
"Are you going out to breakfast to-morrow?"
"I'm not sure," said Alice.
"And lunch, to-morrow?"
"Yes."
"And dinner to-morrow night?"
"And the next, and the next, and the next, and the next?" asked Sara.
"You shut up!" Robert commanded rudely. "Why are you going?" he asked.
"I'll tell you why," replied his mother, her voice cool as an iceberg. "It's because your father objects to the way that you and Sara and Jamie eat,—and do not eat,—at table. Your remarks spoil his pleasure. He is tired, and he is going out to take a rest."
Gloom spread over Robert. For one second it seemed as if it would work. It might have worked without Sara; but at that point Sara, the heartless, clapped her hands and cried aloud:
​"Oh, goody! Now we can have a picnic every day—every time we have a meal, and we can have meals every time we want to!"
"How do you know?" asked Robert glumly.
Sara cocked her head on one side.
"I've been talking to Grandma, and, oh, lots of people. Do you like doughnuts and popcorn?"
It was these two words that took the last gleam of hope from the heart of Alice Marcey. Instinct had told her that her husband was wrong from the first—but what he had done was to get angry at the Domestic Situation—and that, far from giving in to him, she should have "humored" him, which means in polite language that, instead of treating your fellow man as an equal, you apparently agree with him with all alacrity, in the meanwhile working out for him his destiny yourself as seems best to you. Alice had been weak, and she knew it. What hurt her most was that Tom was fantastic, that this scheme of his could be called by no other name.
They started off that evening to a restaurant, Tom giving orders to the treacherously passive Laurie.
"Put out plenty of milk and zwieback for the children."
"Yes, sir!" replied Laurie. But Alice seemed to sniff other viands than those mentioned by her husband. Since she was standing by him, she intended to do so.
"What is that, Laurie?" she demanded.
"Oh, I was frying up a bit of somethin' for meself. There's quite a lot of leavings around, you know, Mis' Marcey."
Alice listened with aversion to her husband's cheery assurances, "This'll bring 'em around, you'll see, in a day or two." At that moment, men, and especially husbands, annoyed Alice Marcey. For one moment, her hand, not as adequate as it should have been, had left ​the domestic tiller, and now see what was happening!
Usually when Alice and Tom had dined at a restaurant it had been a special sort of merrymaking. To-night one could see with half an eye that Tom's mind was not here. He was wondering whether the children were eating their zwieback and milk. Alice, on the other hand, was wondering what they were eating, and what they were doing. They finished their meal with undue haste and returned home. All seemed as it should be. Jamie was looking at a picture book. Sara was playing with paper dolls, and Robert was studying his lessons. It might have been Alice's overwrought imagination that made her hear Laurie's voice saying:
"Whist! my darlin's, not a word!"
"Are my darlings all right?" Alice asked.
To this Robert replied, "All right, I guess."
And Sara chirped, "Grandma was in. Yes, and Mrs. Painter came, too."
"Mrs. Painter," asked Tom. "What did she come for?"
"Oh, she just came!" Sara brightly gave out. "And Mrs. Phinney came to see Laurie, too."
During this time Alice noticed that Robert was trying to check Sara's artless flow of talk.
"Who is Mrs. Phinney?" inquired Tom Marcey.
"She's just a friend of Laurie's." Sara could hold in no longer.
"Say, Father," she cried from the depths of her generous heart, "say, don't you want a piece of molasses candy and a popcorn ball? Mrs. Phinney, she makes the grandest kind!"
I think any wife would have agreed that Mr. Marcey lost his temper with needless violence at this kind remark of Sara's. He fixed his wife with an awful eye.
"It is not for this! It is not to have their stomachs ​filled full of trash by meddling neighbors, that we are going out of our comfortable home to a restaurant, and you ought to see that things like this don't happen!"
To this Alice might have responded that, having been out of the house, she could not help it.
He called Sara and Robert before him.
"Do you hear what I say? Not a single thing between meals are you to eat!"
A swift look of intelligence passed between the two children. It was as sharp as summer lightning, few mothers living would have let it pass unchallenged; but Alice was tired of the whole affair. She had been put in a ridiculous situation, so she formed an alliance with her children against her husband. She formed it by saying nothing and letting that look of swift intelligence pass by unheeded. It was all over in the twinkling of an eye. The children were silent just long enough for Tom Marcey to reiterate, "Do you understand me?"
To which Robert replied, "Yes, sir!"
And Sara, in the most dulcet of tones, "Yes, Father!"
Here Laurie came in.
"I wish you'd step here," she said firmly. "Jamie doesn't look right to me. Jamie's sick."
Tom glanced at Jamie and telephoned for the doctor.
"What," he asked Alice, "do you suppose is the matter with that child? Do you suppose just because we've turned our backs a minute, that he's been eating trash? Can't we go to a restaurant without every idiot in the world filling that child full?"
Here Alice lost patience.
"The trouble is you, Tom Marcey!" she cried. "You with your ridiculous 'No more meals!' You didn't mean it! All you wanted was to get away!"
He checked the torrent of her anger.
"That's what you need," he said pacifically. "That's ​what you need. Things are getting on your nerves. You need to get away."
So kind was his tone that Alice did not reply, but she realized now she could never get away; that she could never leave her helpless children at the mercy of a man, unreasonable enough to formulate the words "No more meals," even though he didn't mean them.