Free High Time by Mary Lasswell Page B

now free to explore the Ark. He was playing Air Port, diving in and out between the rose velour curtains. Myrna joined him the moment Mrs. Rasmussen released her. Miss Tinkham winced at each crash and bang the children produced. She kept just as far away from them as she could, remembering Myrna’s passion for exercising her perfect occlusion.
    ‘We sure run into a herd o’ wild elephants, this time,’ Mrs. Feeley said gloomily.
    The air was full of the sound of ack-ack guns, the current plague, reproduced with disgusting realism by the youngsters. Miss Tinkham thought she might have an attack of the vapors and Mrs. Feeley’s head was splitting. Even Mrs. Rasmussen’s monumental calm was cracking. The children climbed onto the cherished table with the chromium legs and dived off onto the floor.
    ‘Z-o-o-o-o-m! I’m a Dive Bomber!’ Pierpont yelled, hitting the floor with a thwack that would have broken every bone in an adult’s body. The ladies were reduced to such a state of inertia that they hadn’t sufficient energy left even to lodge a protest.
    Into this mad stampede walked Darleen and a haggard, red-haired young woman with an acute nervous tic; she could be no one but the mother of the wolf-pack.
    ‘May I present Daphne Garfunkle?’ Darleen said to the gathering at large.
    Pierpont and Myrna backed into Miss Tinkham’s room at the sight of their mother.
    Mrs. Feeley was fascinated by the tic. It gave Mrs. Garfunkle a certain air of cupidity, as if she expected the ladies to have a hidden agreement and understanding about some unsavory project in the offing. Miss Tinkham regarded their newest acquaintance with the steady gaze of a cobra regarding a snake-charmer. Mrs. Rasmussen wanted to stick a pin in it to see if it was real.
    ‘Now this is the story:’ Mrs. Garfunkle began.
    ‘We know the story!’ Mrs. Feeley interrupted. ‘What we wanna know is what you aimin’ to do about it?’
    Mrs. Garfunkle’s eye winked twice as fast as usual. The question set her back on her heels. She decided to try a little bluster.
    ‘Now look here,’ she said nastily, ‘I didn’t ask you to come in and kidnap my children!’
    ‘Kidnap, hell!’ Mrs. Feeley shouted. ‘Did you know that they’s laws in this state? Did you know you could be announced a unfit mother for them kids? You could be sent to the Reformatory for neglectin’ ’em that way! You takin’ them men in there with them kids! You’d oughta be ashamed o’ yourself! Not to mention the disgrace on their poor, dead dad! Couldn’t even sleep in his grave did he know they wasn’t gettin’ even the up-bringin’ of a alley-cat!’
    Mrs. Garfunkle was silent under the blast.
    ‘Yeah. An’ does the Children’s Society get wind o’ where you been keepin’ ’em, they’ll be took away from you for good! We ain’t what you could call snobs, but that sure ain’t no Salvation Army hotel you’re keepin’ ’em in!’ Mrs. Rasmussen spat her venom.
    Darleen looked uncomfortable. The reference to her address and the protracted silence of the children had combined to make her uneasy. She got up and went into Miss Tinkham’s room. In a few minutes she came out, dragging a child in each hand. They had discovered Miss Tinkham’s cosmetics. They had covered their faces with scarlet dots of lipstick and had painted handlebar mustaches on their upper lips with eyebrow pencil. Miss Tinkham emitted a faint squeak, Mrs. Rasmussen rolled her eyes to the skies, and Mrs. Feeley clasped her hands and prayed movingly: ‘Jesus God!’
    Suddenly Mrs. Garfunkle was seized with a shaking and quivering akin to an epileptic fit. She jerked and shook and groaned.
    ‘Gawd!’ Mrs. Feeley cried. ‘Somebody do somethin’! She’ll be speakin’ in tongues in another minute! She ain’t but one jump ahead of a runnin’ fit now!’
    The children stared at their mother, entranced.
    Mrs. Rasmussen appeared with a towel wrung out of ice-water and put it on Mrs.