ether the day before and the proof had
just come home. Father was not in the picture. It was a handsome
picture. They admitted it themselves. They had urged father to come
along, but he had pleaded his business, as usual. As they studied the
picture they would glance across at father and realize how little the
picture lost by his absence. It lost nothing but the contrast.

While they were engaged each in that most fascinating of
employments--studying one's own photograph--they were all waiting for
the dining-room maid to appear like a black-and-white sketch and crisply
announce that dinner was served. They had not arrived yet at having a
man. Indeed, that room could still remember when a frowsy, blowsy hired
girl was wont to stick her head in and groan, "Supper's ready!"

In fact, mother had never been able to live down a memory of the time
when she used to put her own head in at a humbler dining-room door and
call with all the anger that cooks up in a cook: "Come on! What we got's
on the table!" But mother had entirely forgotten the first few months of
her married life, when she would sing out to father: "Oh, honey, help me
set the table, will you? I've a surprise for you--something you like!"

This family had evolved along the cycles so many families go
through--from pin feathers to paradise plumes--only, the male bird had
failed to improve his feathers or his song, though he never failed to
bring up the food and keep the nest thatched.

The history of an American family can often be traced by its monuments
in the names the children call the mother. Mrs. Grout had begun as--just
one Ma. Eventually they doubled that and progressed from the accent on
the first to the accent on the second ma. Years later one of the
inarticulate brats had come home as a collegian in a funny hat, and Mama
had become Mater. This had lasted until one of the brattines came home
as a collegienne with a swagger and a funny sweater. And then her Latin
title was Frenchified to _Mere_--which always gave father a shock; for
father had been raised on a farm, where only horses' wives were called
by that name.

Father had been dubbed Pop at an early date. Efforts to change this
title had been as futile as the terrific endeavors to keep him from
propping his knife against his plate. He had been browbeaten out of
using the blade for transportation purposes, but at that point he had
simply ceased to develop.

Names like Pappah, Pater, and _Pere_ wo