right.

Not that I don't try. Say, one of the big ambitions of my young life has
been to do something that would please Auntie so much that no matter
what breaks I made later on she'd be bound to remember it. Up to date,
though, I haven't pulled anything of the kind. No. In fact, just the
reverse.

I've often wished there was some bureau I could go to and get the
correct dope on managin' an in-law aunt with a hair-trigger disposition.
Like the Department of Agriculture. You know if it was boll-weevils, or
cattle tick, or black rust, all I'd have to do would be to drop a
postcard to Washington and in a month or so I'd have all kinds of
pamphlets, with colored plates and diagrams, tellin' me just what to do.
But balky aunts on your wife's side seem to have been overlooked.

Somebody ought to write a book on the subject. You can get 'em that will
tell you how to play bridge, or golf, or read palms, or raise chickens,
or bring up babies. But nothin' on aunts who give you the cold eye and
work up suspicions. And it's more or less important, 'specially if
they're will-makin' aunts, with something to make wills about.

Not that I'm any legacy hound. She can do what she wants with her money,
for all of me. Course, there's Vee to be considered. I wouldn't want to
think, when the time comes, if it ever does, that her Auntie is with us
no more, that it was on account of something I'd said or done that the
Society for the Suppression of Jazz Orchestras was handed an unexpected
bale of securities instead of the same being put where Vee could cash in
on the coupons. Also there's Master Richard Hemmingway. I want to be
able to look sonny in the face, years from now, without having to
explain that if I'd been a little more diplomatic towards his mother's
female relations he might he startin' for college on an income of his
own instead of havin' to depend on my financin' his football career.

Besides, our family is so small that it seems to me the least I can do
to be on good terms with all of 'em. 'Specially I'd like to please
Auntie now and then just for the sake of--well, I don't go so far as to
say I could be fond of Auntie for herself alone, but you know what I
mean. It's the proper thing.

At the same time, I wouldn't want to seem to be overdoin' the act. No.
So when it's a question of whether Auntie should be allowed to settle
down for the spring in an apartment hotel in town, or be urged to stop
with us until Bar Harbor o