"Your Town." He was said to be
very lively and insulting. She would be home by five, running in to see
the children for a minute before going to her hotel to rest before
dinner.

A selfish day, perhaps. But forty years of unselfish ones had paid for
it. Well. Shopping with nine-year-old Joan was out of the question. So,
too, was the lecture. After the dentist had mended the brace Joan would
have to be brought home for her lunch. Peter would be there, too. It was
Easter vacation time. Hannah probably would lunch with them, in Marcia's
absence, nagging them a little about their spinach and chop and apple
sauce. She hated to see the two children at table alone, though Marcia
said that was nonsense.

Hannah and Marcia differed about a lot of things. Hannah had fallen into
the bad habit of saying, "When you were children I didn't----"

"Yes, but things are different now, please remember, Mother. I want my
children to have all the advantages I can give them. I want them to have
all the advantages I never had."

If Ed was present at such times he would look up from his paper to say,
"The kids'll never thank you for it, Marsh."

"I don't want them to."

There was something strangely familiar about the whole thing as it
sounded in Hannah's ears.

The matter of the brace, alone. There was a tiny gap between Joan's two
front teeth and, strangely enough, between Peter's as well. It seemed
to Hannah that every well-to-do child in Hyde Park had developed this
gap between the two incisors and that all the soft pink child mouths in
the district parted to display a hideous and disfiguring arrangement of
complicated wire and metal. The process of bringing these teeth together
was a long and costly one, totalling between six hundred and two
thousand dollars, depending on the reluctance with which the parted
teeth met, and the financial standing of the teeths' progenitors.
Peter's dental process was not to begin for another year. Eight was
considered the age. It seemed to be as common as vaccination.

From Hannah: "I don't know what's the matter with children's teeth
nowadays. My children's teeth never had to have all this contraption on
them. You got your teeth and that was the end of it."

"Perhaps if they'd paid proper attention to them," Marcia would reply,
"there wouldn't be so many people going about with disfigured jaws now."

Then there were the dancing lessons. Joan went twice a week, Peter once.
Joan danced very well