“Finest people in Daleport,” he stated. “Genuine old Western Reserve stock, not like London Junction folks at all. Originally from Vermont, fine old New England folks.”

Aunt Lois, ruffled by the turn affairs had taken, retorted that most everybody came from New England at one time or another, because there was no place else to come from unless they were immigrants, and the reason they came was they were such mean skinflints they wanted to get whatever property they could for nothing, and if they were so fine they wouldn’t have needed to leave Vermont in the first place. Papa was dashed by this for a moment, but he would not have his triumph spoiled. He reminded Aunt Lois that the new Mrs. Willard was second cousin to J. B. Hawkins of Ashtabula, one-time congressman. Aunt Lois replied that this didn’t make Mrs. Willard a congressman, and she didn’t see what was so wonderful about being cousins, especially second cousins of anybody, because second cousins never left you anything, and besides she’d read in the Literary Digest that the entire white race was thirty-second cousins of each other. The onion being the cousin of the lily didn’t make it any posy, she said, or smell any the better.

Papa had brought his news to her in a genial, all-forgiving mood, certain that at last he was doing the right thing, so that Aunt Lois’s testy reaction gave him more sorrow than anger. His proud, beaming smile changed to an expression of grieved bewilderment.

“I don’t understand you, Lois,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve been raising Cain for years about my running with the wrong women, so I go out of my way to get a real lady, someone Daisy would be sure to say would make a good, refined mother for the girls. And already you’re giving me hell for it. If they aren’t too tough for you, they’re too refined; that’s about the size of it. Goddamn, what’s a man to do, trying to do the right thing and always getting kicked in the pants for it?”

He stalked out of the house, glowering, leaving Aunt Lois to pursue her unfavorable reflections aloud to the children. They were puzzled as much as their father had been by her indignation, since she had often darkly hinted at the day he would someday disgrace them all by marrying Bonnie Purdy. Marcia and Florrie had hoped this disgrace would happen, but Lena, who was more socially advanced now, had primly informed Papa one day that she would run away if he married Bonnie, because Mary Evelyn’s mother said Bonnie wasn’t nice. Papa was a little afraid of his oldest daughter, but he said he guessed Bonnie Purdy was about as nice as Mary Evelyn’s mother, but he had no intention of marrying either one. When news came of the new marriage, Lena gravely thanked her father for following her advice. Marcia was glad of any change, but Florrie wept that she did not want any new mama; she had only one mama, and nobody could make her have another one. Eventually they received souvenir postcards of Niagara Falls and the three clippings of the wedding.