Part 14

I’ve thought about that a lot, these days. My parents picked up Jerry and adopted him to “broaden” me and immediately set about the business of making him as much like ourselves as possible. They succeeded to the point where we both would have gone through life bean merchants, and happy at it, but for Keeban.

He’s the one that did things to us.

But for him, the game would have been my club and golf course, the Drive, the Drake, the other items I’ve mentioned.

I’d have married, I suppose, some girl with my exact previous notions of the game.

Now, as I’ve mentioned, I’m married to Doris. And I have, I know, the best wife in the world. Certainly the most interesting.

Some of the family friends, who know the facts, feel there is something fundamentally wrong with my wife.

There is not; and there never was anything wrong--except counterfeiting.

She doesn’t admit that was wrong. She concedes that now that she’s married to me there is no actual occasion for anyone in the family engraving a steel plate but she makes this concession in a way which suggests that, should occasion ever arise, she will not be without recourse as a breadwinner.

The interesting part, for me, is I don’t know how much she means it. So I’m playing that bean business safe to keep the occasions down below and quite out of her reach.

If one ever blows the lid off, I’ll tell you.

+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber’s note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+