“Mercy!” gasped Eveley.
“Our father-in-law,” added Mrs. Severs quickly. “Dody’s father. He is coming to live with us.”
“Oh!” breathed Eveley. “Won’t that be lovely?”
Mrs. Severs burst into passionate weeping. “It won’t be lovely,” she sobbed. “It will be ghastly.” She sat up abruptly and wiped her eyes. “He is the most heart-breaking thing you ever saw, and he doesn’t like me. He doesn’t approve of dimples, and he says I am soft. And he has the most desperate old chum you ever saw, a perfect wreck with red whiskers, and they get together every night and play pinochle and smoke smelly old pipes, and he won’t have curtains in his bedroom, and he is crazy about a phonograph, and he won’t eat my cooking.”
“I should think you would like that,” said Eveley. “Maybe he will cook for himself.”
“That is just it,” wailed Mrs. Severs. “He does. He cooks the smelliest kind of corn beef and cabbage, and eats liver by the—by the cow, and has raw onions with every meal. And he drinks tea by the gallon. And he cooks everything himself and piles it on his plate like a mountain and carries it to the table and sits there and eats it right before company and everybody.”
“I don’t see how Mr. Severs ever came to have a father like that,” said Eveley in open surprise.
“Well, the funny thing about it is that he would really be very nice if he wasn’t so outrageous. And he swears terribly. He says ‘Holy Mackinaw’ at everything. But he loves Dody. They lived together for years, and it nearly killed him when Dody got married. And Dody said, ‘You will live with us of course, father,’ and so we expected it. But he went off for a visit after we were married—he and the red-whiskered friend, and we sort of thought—we kind of hoped—miracles do happen, you know—and so I just kept believing that something would turn up to save us. But it didn’t. Dody got a letter this morning, and he will be here this afternoon. Oh, I wish I were dead.”
“Is he terribly poor?”
“Mercy, no! He’s got plenty of money. Lots more than we have. Enough to live anywhere he pleases.”