expect every man that said ‘good evening’ was waiting to grab it.  So they weren’t popular, and started off for Europe to study art and music.  Of course when they came back they had a lot of lingo about the art atmosphere and all that; home was a misfit and impossible, so they went to live in a swell studio with two maids and a Jap butler in costume, and do really give bang-up musicals, with paid talent of course.  I went to one.

“That left Georgie, the odd one, who was the eldest, with poor Mrs. Townley.  By this time the old lady was kind of broken-spirited, and worried a good deal as to why all her girls left her,—­’she’d always tried to do her duty,’—­and all that.  This discouraged Georgie; she got blue and nervous, had indigestion, and, mistaking it for religion, vamoosed into a high-church retreat.  And I call it mighty hard lines for the old lady.”

I thought “too much money,” but I didn’t say it, for this brutally direct but well-meaning woman could not imagine such a thing, and she continued:  “Yet Mrs. Townley had a soft snap compared to some, for she was in the right set at the start, with both feet well up on the ladder, and didn’t have to climb; but Heaven help those with daughters who have thin purses and have to stretch a long neck and keep it stiff, so, in a crowd at least, nobody’ll notice their feet are dangling and haven’t any hold.

“Ah, but this isn’t the worst yet; that’s the clever ‘new daughter’ kind that sticks by her ma, who was herself once a particular housekeeper, and takes charge of her long before there’s any need; regulates her clothes and her food and her callers, drags her around Europe to rheumatism doctors, and pushes her into mud baths; jerks her south in winter and north in summer, for her ‘health and amusement,’ so she needn’t grow narrow, when all the poor soul needs and asks is to be let stay in her nice old-fashioned country house, and have the village children in to make flannel petticoats; entertain the bishop when he comes to confirm, with a clerical dinner the same as she used to; spoil a lot of grandchildren, of which there aren’t any; and once in a while to be allowed to go into the pantry between meals, when the butler isn’t looking, and eat something out of the refrigerator with her fingers to make sure she’s got them!

“No, my dear, rather than that, I choose the lap dog and poor relation, who is generally too dejected to object to anything.  Besides, lap dogs are much better now than in the days when the choice lay only between sore-eyed white poodles and pugs.  Boston bulls are such darlings that for companions they beat half the people one knows!”

I am doubly glad that the twins are boys!  Well, so be it, for women do often frighten me and I misunderstand them, but men are so easy to comprehend and love.  While now, when Richard and Ian puzzle me, all I need to do is to point to father and Evan, and say, “Look! ask them, for they can tell you all you need to know!”