THE MOTHER-IN-LAW
I
MRS. JOLIFFE had said, at the time of her daughter's marriage: "Then I hope her children 'll not take after me—fer if they do, they 'll have the divil's own time bringin' her up." Mrs. Joliffe was Irish. She was fat and jolly, with a sense of humor that could he sly, and whimsical, and even discreet. Her husband had been English and a butcher. "He was a blood-puddin' Britisher," she would say in loving memory. "God rest his bones." And whatever natural differences she had ever had with the girl, she laid to the fact that Hetty took after him.
"An' annyway, there 's no sort o' comfort in a daughter nowadays," she contended. "I 'd as soon have a canary bird to look after. They eat nothin'. An' they 're that danged indipindint! If I 'd 'a' had a son, now, he 'd never 'a' knowed where to find a shirt to his body unless I laid it out fer him. These hoity-toity young misses in their little slippers, goin' hoppin' along on two toes! If I 'd 'a' had a son, I c'u'd 'a' heard him comin' a block away. I never see a big fut like that in a trolley-car that I don't envy the mother of it."
These complaints, of course, were intended more than
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