yank it back out of reach just before she lands on it.  There’s nothing like using a little diplomacy in this world, and, so far as women are concerned, diplomacy is knowing when to stay away.  And a diplomatist is one who lets the other fellow think he’s getting his way, while all the time he’s having his own.  It never does any special harm to let people have their way with their mouths.

What you want to do is to keep mother-in-law from mixing up in your family affairs until after she gets used to the disgrace of having a pork-packer for a son-in-law, and Helen gets used to pulling in harness with you.  Then mother’ll mellow up into a nice old lady who’ll brag about you to the neighbors.  But until she gets to this point, you’ve got to let her hurt your feelings without hurting hers.  Don’t you ever forget that Helen’s got a mother-in-law, too, and that it’s some one you think a heap of.

Whenever I hear of a fellow’s being found out by his wife, it always brings to mind the case of Dick Hodgkins, whom I knew when I was a young fellow, back in Missouri.  Dickie was one of a family of twelve, who all ran a little small any way you sized them up, and he was the runt.  Like most of these little fellows, when he came to match up for double harness, he picked out a six-footer, Kate Miggs.  Used to call her Honeybunch, I remember, and she called him Doodums.

Honeybunch was a good girl, but she was as strong as a six-mule team, and a cautious man just naturally shied away from her.  Was a pretty free stepper in the mazes of the dance, and once, when she was balancing partners with Doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan.  It ought to have been a warning to Doodums, but he was plumb infatuated, and went around pretending that he’d been kicked by a horse.  After that the boys used to make Honeybunch mighty mad when she came out of dark corners with Doodums, by feeling him to see if any of his ribs were broken.  Still he didn’t take the hint, and in the end she led him to the altar.

We started in to give them a lovely shivaree after the wedding, beginning with a sort of yell which had been invented by the only fellow in town who had been to college.

As I remember, it ran something like this: 

Hun, hun, hunch!  Bun, bun, bunch!  Funny, funny!  Honey, honey!  Funny Honeybunch!

But as soon as we got this off, and before we could begin on the dishpan chorus, Honeybunch came at us with a couple of bed-slats and cleaned us all out.

Before he had married, Doodums had been one of half a dozen half-baked sports who drank cheap whisky and played expensive poker at the Dutchman’s; and after he’d held Honeybunch in his lap evenings for a month, he reckoned one night that he’d drop down street and look in on the boys.  Honeybunch reckoned not, and he didn’t press the matter, but after they’d gone to bed and she’d dropped off to sleep, he slipped into his clothes and down the waterspout to the ground.  He sat up till two o’clock at the Dutchman’s, and naturally, the next morning he had a breath like a gasoline runabout, and looked as if he’d been attending a successful coon-hunt in the capacity of the coon.