The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors

								

“Well, yes, I suppose they are. It oughtn't be so in our case, though,
as we've been through it twice before: once with my son--he oughtn't
to have counted, but he did--and once with my eldest daughter. Yes,
you might say you never do quite expect it, though everybody else does.
Then, in this case, she was the baby so long, that we always thought of
her as a little girl. Yes, she's kept on being the pet, I guess, and we
couldn't realize what was in the air.”
I had thought, from the first sight of him, that there was something
very charming in my neighbor's looks. He had a large, round head, which
had once been red, but was now a russet silvered, and was not too large
for his manly frame, swaying amply outward, but not too amply, at the
girth. He had blue, kind eyes, and a face fully freckled, and the girl
he was speaking of with a tenderness in his tones rather than his words,
was a young feminine copy of him; only, her head was little, under its
load of red hair, and her figure, which we had lately noticed flitting
in and out, as with a shy consciousness of being stared at on account of
her engagement, was as light as his was heavy on its feet.
I said, “Naturally,” and he seemed glad of the chance to laugh again.
“Well, of course! And her being away at school made it all the more so.
If we'd had her under our eye, here--Well, we shouldn't have had her
under our eye if she had BEEN here; or if we had, we shouldn't have seen
what was going on; at least I shouldn't; maybe her mother would. So
it's just as well it happened as it did happen, I guess. We shouldn't
have been any the wiser if we'd known all about it.” I joined him in his
laugh at his paradox, and he began again. “What's that about being the
unexpected that happens? I guess what happens is what ought to have
been expected. We might have known when we let her go to a coeducational
college that we were taking a risk of losing her; but we lost our other
daughter that way, and SHE never went to ANY kind of college. I guess we
counted the chances before we let her go. What's the use? Of course
we did, and I remember saying to my wife, who's more anxious than I am
about most things--women are, I guess--that if the worst came to the
worst, it might not be such a bad thing. I always thought it wasn't
such an objectionable feature, in the coeducational system, if the young
people did get acquainted under it, and maybe so well acquainted that
they didn't want to part enemies in the end. I said to my wife that I
didn't see how, if a girl was going to get married, she could have a
better basis than knowing the fellow through three or four years' hard
work together. When you think of the sort of hit-or-miss affairs most
marriages are that young people make after a few parties and picnics,
coeducation as a preliminary to domestic happiness doesn't seem a bad
notion.”
“There's something in what you say,” I assented.
“Of course there is,” my neighbor insisted. “I couldn't help laughing,