Vincent says that about tells the story.
“And where is it she’s been livin’ all this time that you’ve been gettin’ on so well in New York?” says I.
“In our old home, Tonawanda,” says he, shudderin’ some as he lets go of the name. “It’s where she should have stayed, too!”
“So-o-o-o?” says I. I’d been listenin’ just out of politeness up to that point; but from then on I got int’rested, and I don’t let up until I’ve pumped out of him all the details about just how much of a nuisance an old, back number mother could be to a couple of ambitious young folks that had grown up and married into the swell mob.
It was a case that ought to be held up as a warnin’ to lots of superfluous old mothers that ain’t got any better taste than to keep on livin’ long after there’s any use for ’em. Mother Vincent hadn’t made much trouble at first, for she’d had an old maid sister to take care of; but when a bad case of the grip got Aunt Sophrony durin’ the previous winter, mother was left sort of floatin’ around.
She tried visitin’ back and forth between Vincent and Nellie just one consecutive trip, and the experiment was such a frost that it caused ructions in both families. In her Tonawanda regalia mother wa’n’t an exhibit that any English butler could be expected to pass the soup to and still keep a straight face.
So Vincent thinks it’s time to anchor her permanent somewhere. Accordin’ to his notion, he did the handsome thing too. He buys her a nice little farm about a mile outside of Tonawanda, a place with a fine view of the railroad tracks on the west and a row of brick yards to the east, and he lands mother there with a toothless old German housekeeper for company. He tells her he’s settled a good comfortable income on her for life, and leaves her to enjoy herself.
But look at the ingratitude a parent can work up! She ain’t been there more’n a couple of months before she begins complainin’ about bein’ lonesome. She don’t see much of the Tonawanda folks now, the housekeeper ain’t very sociable, the smoke from the brick yards yellows her Monday wash, and the people she sees goin’ by in the cars is all strangers. Couldn’t Vincent swap the farm for one near New York? She liked the looks of the place when she was there, and wouldn’t mind being closer.
“Of course,” says he, “that was out of the question!”
“Oh, sure!” says I. “How absurd! But what’s the contents of this late bulletin about her being a stray?”