THE WHOLE FAMILY

I. THE FATHER

by William Dean Howells

As soon as we heard the pleasant news--I suppose the news of an
engagement ought always to be called pleasant--it was decided that I
ought to speak first about it, and speak to the father. We had not been
a great while in the neighborhood, and it would look less like a bid
for the familiar acquaintance of people living on a larger scale than
ourselves, and less of an opening for our own intimacy if they turned
out to be not quite so desirable in other ways as they were in the
worldly way. For the ladies of the respective families first to offer
and receive congratulations would be very much more committing on both
sides; at the same time, to avoid the appearance of stiffness, some one
ought to speak, and speak promptly. The news had not come to us
directly from our neighbors, but authoritatively from a friend of
theirs, who was also a friend of ours, and we could not very well hold
back. So, in the cool of the early evening, when I had quite finished
rasping my lawn with the new mower, I left it at the end of the swath,
which had brought me near the fence, and said across it,

"Good-evening!"

My neighbor turned from making his man pour a pail of water on the
earth round a freshly planted tree, and said, "Oh, good-evening! How
d'ye do? Glad to see you!" and offered his hand over the low coping so