Read Belles on their Toes for Free Online

for his cat."
    "How about Mr. Chairman?" Fred asked.
    Anne snapped her fingers. "I knew I forgot something. Where is he?"
    Mr. Chairman was our dog, a sort of collie. He was there, barking at the cab and growling at the driver.
    "Get a leash on him," Anne told Fred. "Don't let him get away."
    Tom came running down Eagle Rock Way.
    "Fourteen," he panted, "ain't nowhere to be found."
    "We'll have to leave her," Anne said. "We're late for the train right now. Get into the cab, quick."
    "Leave Fourteen?" Tom asked incredulously. "Are you crazy?"
    "Please. We simply must catch this train."
    "What do you think I am," Tom snapped. "I ain't going to leave that cat. If she don't go, I don't go."
    "We've got Mr. Chairman," Anne begged. "And you've got the canaries."
    "But I ain't got Fourteen."
    "Damn it," Anne shouted. "I've planned this trip for better than two weeks. I planned it right down to the last bath and shined shoe. A plague of chicken pox didn't delay it and no cat is going to ruin it. Now get into that cab."
    Tom never had heard Anne swear before, and he was impressed.
    "I ain't even got my cap," he said. "Nor the birds, neither."
    "Go get them," Anne told him, "and be damned quick about it."
    "You heard what the lady said," the driver put in. "I got other stops to make."
    Tom went, mumbling but hurrying. "I wisht your father could hear you talk like that. He'd learn you. He'd learn you good, you bold thing you."
    Tom was still mumbling when he returned in a joggling half run, with his cap and the cage, and got into the cab. "He'd learn you, all right. Swearing like a cab driver in front of all them children. You ain't too big to spank, neither."
    Anne locked the front door and jumped into the cab.
    "One cab for seven people, eight suitcases, a dog and two canaries," the driver inventoried as we started down the driveway. "You should have ordered three at least."
    "We're not too crowded," Anne said as cheerfully as she could.
    "Is that dog housebroken?"
    "Usually," Anne lied.
    "I don't think my insurance covers this."
    "It probably does," she laughed weakly, "if you have an act-of-God clause."
    A block from the house, we saw Fourteen. The cab stopped, Tom called, and there was a streak of orange as the cat dived into his lap and then perched on his shoulder.
    "Look at that," Tom crowed, all of his complaints forgotten. "She was waiting on us. Smartest cat I ever seen, bar none."
    "Are there any other passengers or livestock we are supposed to pick up?" the driver asked.
    "No," Anne told him sheepishly.
    "No cows, goats, or other children?"
    "No."
    "You sure we got them all?"
    "Yes."
    "And may one inquire where the destination is at?"
    "Oh, excuse me," said Anne. "The Lackawanna station."
    "I thought maybe it was Overbrook. You know, the Funny Farm."
    "No," Anne said meekly. "The Lackawanna station, please."
    She leaned back in the seat and tried to adjust Jane a little more comfortably on her lap. She closed her eyes and thought of Mother, now safe in England. She thought of previous trips, when we had driven to New Bedford and taken the Nantucket boat from there. She thought of Dad—strong, gay, and dependable—sitting behind the wheel of our old Pierce Arrow, blowing his bulb horns and shouting "road hog" at the drivers who swerved for their lives as we went barreling by in a cloud of smoke.

    From Anne's standpoint, at least, the remainder of the trip to Nantucket had only about half the earmarks of a howling success—the howling half.
    The hubbub of the night-boat dock demoralized Mr. Chairman, and he yapped, howled, and had to be dragged stiff-legged along the dock and to the gangplank.
    Every two or three steps, Frank would stop and bat him to try to keep him quiet, but the wallops only made Mr. Chairman yap and howl all the louder.
    Tom, with Fourteen and the bird cage under one arm and a bulging wicker suitcase under the other, kept shouting threats about how he'd dose the dog good if it didn't shut up.
    Each of