The Whole Family | Page 2

might say you never do quite expect it, though everybody else does.
Then, in this case, she was the baby so long, that we always thought of
her as a little girl. Yes, she's kept on being the pet, I guess, and we
couldn't realize what was in the air."
I had thought, from the first sight of him, that there was something very
charming in my neighbor's looks. He had a large, round head, which
had once been red, but was now a russet silvered, and was not too large

for his manly frame, swaying amply outward, but not too amply, at the
girth. He had blue, kind eyes, and a face fully freckled, and the girl he
was speaking of with a tenderness in his tones rather than his words,
was a young feminine copy of him; only, her head was little, under its
load of red hair, and her figure, which we had lately noticed flitting in
and out, as with a shy consciousness of being stared at on account of
her engagement, was as light as his was heavy on its feet.
I said, "Naturally," and he seemed glad of the chance to laugh again.
"Well, of course! And her being away at school made it all the more so.
If we'd had her under our eye, here--Well, we shouldn't have had her
under our eye if she had BEEN here; or if we had, we shouldn't have
seen what was going on; at least I shouldn't; maybe her mother would.
So it's just as well it happened as it did happen, I guess. We shouldn't
have been any the wiser if we'd known all about it." I joined him in his
laugh at his paradox, and he began again. "What's that about being the
unexpected that happens? I guess what happens is what ought to have
been expected. We might have known when we let her go to a
coeducational college that we were taking a risk of losing her; but we
lost our other daughter that way, and SHE never went to ANY kind of
college. I guess we counted the chances before we let her go. What's
the use? Of course we did, and I remember saying to my wife, who's
more anxious than I am about most things--women are, I guess--that if
the worst came to the worst, it might not be such a bad thing. I always
thought it wasn't such an objectionable feature, in the coeducational
system, if the young people did get acquainted under it, and maybe so
well acquainted that they didn't want to part enemies in the end. I said
to my wife that I didn't see how, if a girl was going to get married, she
could have a better basis than knowing the fellow through three or four
years' hard work together. When you think of the sort of hit-or-miss
affairs most marriages are that young people make after a few parties
and picnics, coeducation as a preliminary to domestic happiness doesn't
seem a bad notion."
"There's something in what you say," I assented.
"Of course there is," my neighbor insisted. "I couldn't help laughing,
though," and he laughed, as if to show how helpless he had been, "at
what my wife said. She said she guessed if it came to that they would
get to know more of each other's looks than they did of their minds.

She had me there, but I don't think my girl has made out so very poorly
even as far as books are concerned."
Upon this invitation to praise her, I ventured to say, "A young lady of
Miss Talbert's looks doesn't need much help from books."
I could see that what I had said pleased him to the core, though he put
on a frown of disclaimer in replying, "I don't know about her looks.
She's a GOOD girl, though, and that's the main thing, I guess."
"For her father, yes, but other people don't mind her being pretty," I
persisted. "My wife says when Miss Talbert comes out into the garden,
the other flowers have no chance."
"Good for Mrs. Temple!" my neighbor shouted, joyously giving
himself away.
I have always noticed that when you praise a girl's beauty to her father,
though he makes a point of turning it off in the direction of her
goodness, he likes so well to believe she is pretty that he cannot hold
out against any persistence in the admirer of her beauty. My neighbor
now said with the effect of tasting a peculiar sweetness in my words, "I
guess I shall have to tell my wife, that." Then he added, with a rush of
hospitality, "Won't you come in and tell her yourself?"
"Not now, thank you. It's about our