e would imagine, to hear her praise
her baby, that there was no such a one in the world.'

And she laughed heartily at the presumption of that silly, conceited
young mother.

'But, grandmamma,' quickly said my lady friend, 'you must forgive her.
I have heard you many times declare that this, our baby, was by far the
best and finest the world has ever seen.'

'Ah, my dear,' replied grannie, not in the least disconcerted and in
absolute earnestness, 'that's _quite_ different. In our case it's
the truth, and no one could deny it.'

Certainly not! Who would dare?

The love of a grandmother, with its delightful weaknesses, with that
complete collapse of all power of resistance to a child, is no sign of
senility; it is only the love of a mother multiplied by two.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ON MOTHERS-IN-LAW

How to deal with them--Difference between a misfortune and an
accident--'That will spoil the whole thing'--Shoot her!

Adam, they say, must have been a happy man: he had no mother-in-law.

I once heard a Frenchman give the following definition of the
difference that exists between an accident and a misfortune. Suppose
you walk along the bank of a river in the company of your
mother-in-law. If she should fall into the water and be drowned, it is
an accident; if she fall into the water and be pulled out alive, it is
a misfortune.

The mother-in-law is not dreaded in England. An English mother has no
authority over her son: how could she dream of having any over a
son-in-law? The mother-in-law is an object of terror in France, where
the ascendancy of woman over man is a powerful factor in the social
life of the country.

The French woman leads her husband by the nose, and her sons are
submissive to her as long as they remain unmarried, and even when they
are married they remain more or less under her influence until she
dies. That French mother is queen at home, and when she sees that her
daughter has started an establishment of her own, she generally at once
goes there to settle for a little while, sometimes for a long while, to
put her daughter up to a few points about the management of man.

That often causes difficulties and spoils the game; but as nine times
out of ten the young wife will take her mother's part in any little
unpleasantness that may arise, the husband submits. He knows that the
mother-in-law is the drawback of matrimony. He has taken his wife for
better and for worse, and 'worse' i