and
just then Aunt Elizabeth came along the hall and dragged me up to her
room and began to ask me all over again about Mr. Goward and all that
he said--whether I was perfectly SURE he didn't mention any name. She
looked worried and unhappy. Then she asked about Lorraine, but in an
indifferent voice, as if she was really thinking about something else.
I told her all I knew, but she didn't say a word or pay much attention
until I mentioned that the man in the photograph was Mr. Lyman Wilde.
Then--well, I wish you had seen Aunt Elizabeth! She made me promise
afterwards that I'd never tell a single soul what happened, and I won't.
But I do wish sometimes that Billy and I lived on a desert island, where
there wasn't anybody else. I just can't bear being home when everybody
is so unhappy, and when not a single thing I do helps the least little
bit!

VI. THE SON-IN-LAW, by John Kendrick Bangs

On the whole I am glad our family is no larger than it is. It is a
very excellent family as families go, but the infinite capacity of each
individual in it for making trouble, and adding to complications already
sufficiently complex, surpasses anything that has ever before come
into my personal or professional experience. If I handle my end of this
miserable affair without making a break of some kind or other, I shall
apply to the Secretary of State for a high place in the diplomatic
service, for mere international complications are child's-play compared
to this embroglio in which Goward and Aunt Elizabeth have landed us all.
I think I shall take up politics and try to get myself elected to the
legislature, anyhow, and see if I can't get a bill through providing
that when a man marries it is distinctly understood that he marries his
wife and not the whole of his wife's family, from her grandmother down
through her maiden aunts, sisters, cousins, little brothers, et al.,
including the latest arrivals in kittens. In my judgment it ought to be
made a penal offence for any member of a man's wife's family to live on
the same continent with him, and if I had to get married all over again
to Maria--and I'd do it with as much delighted happiness as ever--I
should insist upon the interpolation of a line in the marriage ceremony,
"Do you promise to love, honor, and obey your wife's relatives," and
when I came to it I'd turn and face the congregation and answer "No,"
through a megaphone, so loud that there could be no possibility of a
mis