A crackling shower of phrases filled the room: 

“At their age—­” “Ought to be annulled—­” “Never heard of such a thing in—­” “Fault of both of them and—­” “Keep it out of the papers—­” “Ought to be packed off to school—­” “Do something about it at once, and what I say is—­” “Damn good old-fashioned spanking—­”

Worst of them all was Verona.  “Ted!  Some way must be found to make you understand how dreadfully serious this is, instead of standing around with that silly foolish smile on your face!”

He began to revolt.  “Gee whittakers, Rone, you got married yourself, didn’t you?”

“That’s entirely different.”

“You bet it is!  They didn’t have to work on Eu and me with a chain and tackle to get us to hold hands!”

“Now, young man, we’ll have no more flippancy,” old Henry Thompson ordered.  “You listen to me.”

“You listen to Grandfather!” said Verona.

“Yes, listen to your Grandfather!” said Mrs. Babbitt.

“Ted, you listen to Mr. Thompson!” said Howard Littlefield.

“Oh, for the love o’ Mike, I am listening!” Ted shouted.  “But you look here, all of you!  I’m getting sick and tired of being the corpse in this post mortem!  If you want to kill somebody, go kill the preacher that married us!  Why, he stung me five dollars, and all the money I had in the world was six dollars and two bits.  I’m getting just about enough of being hollered at!”

A new voice, booming, authoritative, dominated the room.  It was Babbitt. 
“Yuh, there’s too darn many putting in their oar!  Rone, you dry up. 
Howard and I are still pretty strong, and able to do our own cussing. 
Ted, come into the dining-room and we’ll talk this over.”

In the dining-room, the door firmly closed, Babbitt walked to his son, put both hands on his shoulders.  “You’re more or less right.  They all talk too much.  Now what do you plan to do, old man?”

“Gosh, dad, are you really going to be human?”

“Well, I—­Remember one time you called us ‘the Babbitt men’ and said we ought to stick together?  I want to.  I don’t pretend to think this isn’t serious.  The way the cards are stacked against a young fellow to-day, I can’t say I approve of early marriages.  But you couldn’t have married a better girl than Eunice; and way I figure it, Littlefield is darn lucky to get a Babbitt for a son-in-law!  But what do you plan to do?  Course you could go right ahead with the U., and when you’d finished—­”

“Dad, I can’t stand it any more.  Maybe it’s all right for some fellows.  Maybe I’ll want to go back some day.  But me, I want to get into mechanics.  I think I’d get to be a good inventor.  There’s a fellow that would give me twenty dollars a week in a factory right now.”