The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall

daughters, and Hound—he never kissed Hound—and came last to Aunt Claire.
    “Don’t you think we could put this off another year or so?” he asked.
    “That’s a good idea,” said Rosalind.
    “Have a good time, Martin,” said Aunt Claire.
    “What about—?”
    “We’ll be fine.” Aunt Claire put her arm around Rosalind. “Won’t we, girls?”
    “I will,” said Batty. “We’re having macaroni and cheese for dinner.”
    “And the rest of you?” asked Mr. Penderwick.
    “We’ll all be fine,” said Skye firmly, and Jane nodded, managing to look enthusiastic. Rosalind nodded, not looking enthusiastic at all.
    “Then I guess I’m ready. I who am about to die salute you.”
    “Good,” said Aunt Claire. She pushed her brother out the front door, then leaned against it as though he might try to shove his way back in. “Okay, girls, now let’s have some fun.”
    Unfortunately, fun on such a night was in short supply. The macaroni and cheese was excellent—made from scratch with celery and onions and three kinds of cheese—and afterward Aunt Claire took the sisters into town for ice cream sundaes, but it was impossible not to notice all the while that their father wasn’t there. Back home again, they pulled out a pile of movies, but when no one could agree on which one to watch, and Skye and Batty almost came to blows over it, Aunt Claire lost patience and sent everyone to bed with Batty at seven-thirty.
             
    “Are you asleep?” Jane asked into the darkness.
    “No,” answered Skye. “I keep listening.”
    “Me too.”
    “I know.”
    Now they listened harder, but the only thing to be heard was the creak of a door opening down the hall.
    “That’s Rosalind,” said Skye.
    “I know.”
    They both slid out of bed and crept quietly out of their bedroom. And there was Rosalind, wrapped in a quilt. She opened the quilt, and now there were three girls huddled together at the top of the steps. Only a few minutes later came the sound they’d all been waiting for—their father’s car pulling into the driveway.
    The sisters leaned back into the shadows as Aunt Claire appeared in the hallway below them—she must have been listening for the car, too. The front door opened and Mr. Penderwick came inside.
    “Well, Martin?” asked Aunt Claire.
    He laughed, but his laugh was part groan.
“Cruciatus.”
    “In English, please.”
    Then the adults went into the living room. If a translation was given, it wasn’t heard by the three upstairs. Skye and Jane looked hopefully at Rosalind.
    She shrugged. “I don’t know
cruciatus
yet.”
    “You need to hurry up and learn more Latin,” said Jane. “Or we’ll never know what’s going on.”
    “Though maybe that would be for the best,” said Skye, yawning.
    “No, it absolutely, positively would not be!” Rosalind stood, jerking the quilt off her sisters. “Now go back to bed and get plenty of rest. Tomorrow we have a lot of thinking to do.”
    Skye and Jane watched her stalk back to her room.
    “Thinking about what?” asked Jane.
    “Who knows?” Skye shook her head. “But I bet I’m not going to like it.”

CHAPTER SIX
    The Save-Daddy Plan
    “ I’ M SURE I BROUGHT a pair of slippers with me,” said Aunt Claire. It was Sunday afternoon, and Rosalind was helping her pack to go home.
    “Are they red?” asked Rosalind from the floor. She pulled a pair of fluffy red slippers from under the bed. They were damp in patches, and one had a ragged hole where the toe used to be.
    “Hound?”
    “I hope they weren’t your favorites.”
    “Only my second favorites,” said Aunt Claire, dropping them into the wastebasket. “I figured Hound was annoyed with me about the blind date, but I didn’t think he was annoyed enough to eat my slippers.”
    Rosalind knew her aunt was trying to make her laugh, but she wasn’t ready to laugh about the blind date, or the dating scheme, or anything about her father and dates. Too obviously not