imagine where she can be."

"You must have grandmothers to burn," says I, "if they're so plenty with
you that you can mislay one now and then without missin' her."

"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.

Vincent says that about tells the story.

"And where is it she's