Free At Home on Ladybug Farm by Donna Ball

buffet that led to the kitchen, and it blocked the double door through which they had pushed it. In turning and positioning the huge piece, everyone except Noah had ended up on the wrong side of that door.
    Lori rolled her eyes. Cici shook her head in disbelief. Lindsay said, “Does anyone have a cell phone?”
    Lori growled, “What difference does it make? It wouldn’t work.”
    Bridget said, “I am not pushing this thing out again.”
    “If we pushed it a little farther, we could stand on top and reach the window,” Cici offered.
    Lori deftly grabbed the keyboard, swung herself underneath the piano, and crawled beneath it to join Noah on the other side of the door.
    The three older women stared after her. “Or,” said Cici, deadpan, “we could crawl under.”
    And so they did.
    “You see, Aunt Bridget,” Lori said earnestly as they walked back to the living room, “that’s between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars per sheep. You’ve got twenty-five sheep, not counting the lambs! That’s twenty-five thousand—”
    “ Hundred ,” corrected all three women at once.
    “Right, twenty-five hundred dollars! That’s nothing to be sneezed at.”
    “No,” agreed Bridget, “it’s certainly not. But that’s not all profit, either. You have to pay the sheepshearer, for one thing. There’s a lot of research to be done before we start counting that money.”
    “Maybe one of the things you could research is how a girl who spent a whole year and a half at UCLA doesn’t know the difference between twenty-five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars,” Cici said.
    “What I’m trying to say,” insisted Lori, deliberately ignoring her mother, “is that this could be the start of a real business. You already have the setup, and a small flock. If you expanded . . .”
    “Well now, we’d really have to research that,” Bridget said.
    “We should get started right away. To get a good price, you want to be the first to the market.”
    “Well, I don’t know about that . . .”
    Lindsay said, “Cici, are you sure you can handle that thing by yourself? It looks awfully big to me. We’ll be glad to help.”
    “It’s fully automated,” Cici assured her. “Couldn’t be simpler. I don’t need any help.” She leaned the big boxy machine back on its rollers and positioned it for action. It made a sound like a train clattering across a trestle in the empty room, even before it was turned on. “It’s even got three speeds.”
    “But won’t your arms get tired?” Bridget said. “Shouldn’t we trade off turns?”
    “Thanks,” Cici said, and her smile tried to soften the hint of condescension in her voice, “but you can really do some damage if you don’t know how to operate one of these things. Really, I don’t need any help.”
    Ida Mae stood in the open doorway, her hair in a scarf, her hands on her hips, and a sour look on her face. “She don’t have the first notion how to work that thing,” she observed, as much to herself as to anyone.
    Cici looked at her sternly. “There is really nothing to it,” she assured her.
    She pulled a sporty baseball cap over her own hair to protect it from the dust, arranged a paper respirator mask across her mouth and nose, and, taking a firm grip on the handle, flipped the power switch. Everyone backed away.
    Nothing happened.
    Frowning, Cici lowered her mask and toggled the switch off, then on again. “That’s funny.”
    “Is it plugged in?” offered Bridget helpfully.
    Cici checked the plug in the wall outlet, then came back and toggled the switch again.
    “Maybe you have to put it in gear or something,” suggested Lori.
    “Or hold a button down,” Lindsay said, “like with a weed whacker.”
    “Is there an instruction book?” Bridget wanted to know.
    “Maybe it’s broken,” said Lori.
    Cici bent down and played with the switch some more.
    Then Noah crossed the room, found the end of the extension cord that was not plugged into the wall,