Then my wife grabbed the picture out of my hands and burst into speech.
"Why do you try to discourage my efforts to be artistic?" she volleyed and thundered. "This is a picture of you holding Mrs. McIlvaine's baby in your arms, and I think it's perfectly lovely, even if the baby is the only intelligent thing in the picture."
When the exercises were over I inquired casually, "Where, my dear, where are the other 21,219 pictures you snapped to-day?"
"Only these two came out good because, don't you see, I'm an amateur yet," was her come-back.
Then she looked lovingly at the result of her day's work and began to peel some bicarbonate of magnesia off her knuckles with the nutcracker.
"Only two out of 21,219--I think you ought to call it a long shot instead of a snap shot," I whispered, after I had dodged behind a sofa.
She went out of the room without saying a word, and I took out my pocketbook and looked at it wistfully.
When Peaches and I get tired of the Big Town--tired of its noises and hullabaloo; tired of being tagged by taxis as we cross a street; tired of watching grocers and butchers hoisting higher the highest cost of living--that's our cue to grab a choo-choo and breeze out to Uncle Peter Grant's farm and bungalow in the wilds of Westchester, which he calls Troolyrooral.
Just to even matters up Uncle Peter and his wife visit us from time to time in our amateur apartment in the Big Town.
Uncle Peter is a very stout old gentleman. When he squeezes into our little flat the walls act as if they were bow-legged.
Uncle Peter always goes through the folding doors sideways and every time he sits down the man in the apartment below us kicks because we move the piano so often.
Aunt Martha is Uncle Peter's wife and she weighs more and breathes oftener.
When the two of them visit our bird-cage at the same time the janitor has to go out and stand in front of the building with a view to catching it if it falls.
When we reached Troolyrooral we found that "Cousin" Elsie Schulz was also a visitor there.
"Cousin" Elsie is a sort of privileged character in the family, having lived with Aunt Martha for over twenty years as a sort of housekeeper.
They call her "Cousin Elsie" just to make it more difficult.