Page:The Family Album.pdf/48

40 Then John took pop out to the rainwater pond and pointed out a big turtle. Pop looked at it enviously, and John said: “Well, you know that turtles live to be a thousand years old?”

Pop shook his tongue in the affirmative.

Then John said: “When he dies we’ll eat him.”

That made pop just as happy as a lark with a broken leg. Then John showed pop a century plant and told him it bloomed once every hundred years. Pop came home and told me that I could expect a bouquet in the near future.

A woman’s idea of beautiful Easter music is the squeak from a new pair of shoes. But if I had married John I’d been running around just as barefooted as a pet cat. He was so stingy that he wore his pajamas in the daytime for underwear.

Of course, I don’t think a man should waste his money, but there ain’t no law against a man being generous on holidays. John asked me to marry him, and then he took out a Staten Island ferry schedule and said: “Where will we go on our honeymoon?”

I always wanted to see something of the world so