We talked for a while, and then he gaped and said: “Excuse me”; and I gaped and said: “Excuse me.” Then after a bit I gaped and said: “Pardon me”; and he gaped immediately after me and said: “Pardon me,” and we went on talking. Finally he said: “Don’t you think it’s a long gap between gaps?” I said: “So it is.” Then, feeling one coming on, I said: “Have a gap on me.” He said: “Not on your life! The last one was on you; have this one on me”—and I did.
I said: “It’s awfully slow here, isn’t it?” “I should say it is,” he replied. I said: “Let’s go home.” “I am home,” he said; “my wife is giving this affair.”
My mother-in-law is a lovely woman—at least, that’s what my wife tells me, anyway; so it must be so. The old dame thinks a great deal of me, too—in fact, she’s always thinking of me, and she’s not the little girl that’s afraid to tell me what she’s thinking, either. My! but my left ear is burning!
We came near losing her the other day—unintentionally on our part, too, because you couldn’t lose her if you tried.
It happened in this way: We have a large, old-fashioned clock hanging in the hall. It’s a massive affair and weighs quite a bit. Well, we were all surprised to hear a terrible crash, which was caused by the clock falling from its place on the wall and breaking in a thousand pieces.
Now my mother-in-law figures in the story in this way: She had been standing right underneath that clock only two minutes before it fell—and had walked away.
Of course, I was awfully sorry—to lose the clock, as it had been in our family for generations back, and in all those years it had kept good time up until the time it fell—and then it was ONLY TWO MINUTES SLOW.
