“Eh?” says he. “No, no! She is really my mother, you know. I’ve got into the way of calling her grammy only during the last three or four years.”
“Oh, I see!” says I. “The grandmother habit is something she’s contracted comparative recent, eh? Ain’t gone to her head, has it?”
Vincent couldn’t say; but by the time he’s quit tryin’ to explain what has happened I’ve got the whole story. First off he points out that Rodney Kipp, havin’ married his sister Nellie, is his brother-in-law, and, as they both have a couple of youngsters, it makes Vincent’s mother a grammy in both families.
“Sure,” says I. “I know how that works out. She stays part of the time with you, and makes herself mighty popular with your kids; then she takes her trunk over to Rodney’s and goes through the same performance there. And when she goes visitin’ other places there’s a great howl all round. That’s it, ain’t it?”
It wa’n’t, not within a mile, and I’d showed up my low, common breedin’ by suggesting such a thing. As gently as he could without hurtin’ my feelin’s too much, Vincent explains that while my programme might be strictly camel’s foot for ordinary people, the domestic arrangements of the upper classes was run on different lines. For instance, his little Algernon Chetwood could speak nothing but French, that bein’ the brand of governess he’d always had, and so he naturally couldn’t be very thick with a grandmother that didn’t understand a word of his lingo.
“Besides,” says Vincent, “mother and my wife, I regret to say, have never found each other very congenial.”
I might have guessed it if I’d stopped to think of how an old lady from the country would hitch with one of them high flyin’ Chetwood girls.
“Then she hangs out with your sister, eh, and does her grandmother act there?” says I.
“Well, hardly,” says Vincent, colorin’ up a little. “You see, Rodney has never been very intimate with the rest of our family. He’s a Kipp, and—— Well, you can’t blame him; for mother is rather old-fashioned. Of course, she’s good and kind-hearted and all that; but—but there isn’t much style about her.”
“Still sticks to the polonaise of ’81, and wears a straw lid she bought durin’ the Centennial, eh?” says I.