The fortnight between that fateful day on the links and the Wednesday aforesaid, was full of surprising complications for the Van Winkle and Barrows families.

The two girls went into fits of hysteria on receipt of a cablegram from their mother in Paris announcing her marriage to Mr. Courtney Van Winkle, of New York. They were still more prostrated on learning from their wide-eyed sweethearts that not only was Courtney their step-father but he was on the point of becoming their brother-in-law as well. A still greater shock came the day of their own double wedding which took place in the Barrows mansion on Ardmore Avenue in the presence of a small company of guests. It developed that the Mrs. Smith who nursed old Mr. Van Winkle and afterwards married him was their divorced sister, Mary, who had not only grown tired of a husband but of nursing other women's husbands as well. The situation was unique.

"Good heavens," said Rip, after the ceremony which linked the entire Barrows family to the Van Winkles, "what relation are we to each other?"

"Well," said his wife, "for one thing, you are my uncle by marriage."

"And I am my father's brother-in-law. By the same argument, the governor becomes his own son's son-in-law. Can you beat it?"

"Your brother becomes your father, and my mother is my sister. Now, let's see what else—"

"And your sister is now your mother-in-law. By the way, has she any children?"

"Two little girls," said Toots.

"That makes poor old Corky a grandfather," groaned Rip.

Pretty much the same conversation took place between Jeff and Beppy.

"Corky is my father-brother," said Jeff, summing it all up.

On the high seas, Mr. and Mrs. Courtney Van Winkle threshed out the amazing situation, and in the mists of the Maine coast, the flabbergasted father of the three young men who fared forth to make men of themselves agonised over the result of their efforts.

"When I am quite strong again, my dear," said he to the comely ex-nurse—who, by the way, had engaged a male attendant to take her place in looking after the convalescent gentleman, "we must have a family gathering in New York. What is your mother like?"

"She is like all women who marry at her age," said she without hesitation—and without rancour. "She's very silly. What sort of a person is your son?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Van Winkle with conviction.

We will permit three months to slip by. No honeymoon should be shorter than that. It is meet that we should grant our quiddlers three and their excellent parent the supreme felicity of enjoying the period without being spied upon by a mercenary story-teller. But all interests, as well as all roads, lead to a common centre. The centre in this case was New York City.

It goes without saying that the Barrows girls, Edith and Gwendolyn, preferred New York to W—— as a place of residence. They married New Yorkers and it was only right and proper that they should love New York. Possessing a full third of the enormous fortune left by their distilling father, they maintained that they could afford to live in New York, even though their husbands remained out of employment for the rest of their natural lives. We already know that Mrs. Corky Van Winkle longed for a seat among the lofty, and that Mrs. Bleecker Van Winkle had married at least two gentlemen of Gotham in the struggle to feel at home there. Therefore, we are permitted to announce that Jefferson and Ripley Van Winkle resigned their positions as golf-instructors the instant the wedding bells began to ring, and went upon the retired list with the record of an honourable, even distinguished career behind them. They said something about going into "the Street," and their amiable and beautiful wives exclaimed that it would be perfectly lovely of them. But, they added, there was really no excuse for hurrying.

We come now to the family gathering in the palatial home of Mr. Courtney Van Winkle, just off Fifth Avenue (on the near east side), and it is December. Corky's wife bought the place, furnished. He couldn't stop her. The only flaw in the whole arrangement, according to the ambitious Grand Duchess, was the deplorable accident that admitted a trained nurse into the family circle. It would be very hard to live down. She never could understand why Mr. Van Winkle did it!

The twins and their brides were occupying enormous suites at one of the big hotels, pending the completion of a new and exclusive apartment building in Fifth Avenue. They had been in town but a week when Courtney and the Grand Duchess returned from Virginia Hot Springs, where they had spent November. Old Mr. Van Winkle was just out of the hospital after a second operation: an adhesion. He was really unfit for the trip up town from the old Van Winkle mansion; nevertheless, he made it rather than disappoint his new—(I use the word provisionally)—daughter-in-law, who had set her heart upon having the family see what she had bought. I am not quite certain that she didn't include Corky in the exhibit.

There were introductions all around. Mr. Van Winkle, senior, was presented to his mother-in-law and to his sisters, and, somewhat facetiously, to his father-in-law, his brothers, his sons and his daughters. Corky had the pleasure of meeting his three sons-in-law, his three daughters-in-law, his two sisters, his brothers, his father and his granddaughters-in-law. The twins—but why continue? Puzzles of this character provide pleasure for those who choose to work them out for themselves, and no doubt many who have followed the course of this narrative are to be classed among them.

Of course, in his own home Corky sat at the head of the table, but it is not to be assumed that he was the undisputed head of the family, although he may have advanced claims to the distinction because of his position as father-in-law to every one else of the name. Mr. Van Winkle, pere, jocosely offered to relinquish the honour to his son, and the twins vociferously shouted their approval.

"You are the oldest member of the family by marriage, Corky," said Jeff, and was rewarded by a venomous stare from his joint mother-and-sister-in-law.

"How you talk!" said the Grand Duchess, suddenly remembering her lorgnette. The stare became intensified. "Isn't the house attractive, Mr. Van Winkle?" she asked, turning to the old gentleman, with a mirthless smile.

"Are you addressing me, my dear, as your son-in-law or as your father-in-law?" enquired Mr. Van Winkle.

"Why do you ask?" she demanded.

"Because if you are speaking to me as your son, I prefer to be called Bleecker."

"Stuff and nonsense, Mr. Van Winkle! Why, I scarcely know you."

"Won't you tell me your Christian name? I can't very well go about calling my daughter MISSIS Van Winkle."

"Minervy—I mean Minerva. Of course, I shall expect you to call me Minerva. I—I suppose it is only right that I should call you Bleecker. Isn't it an odd situation?"

"I should say so," put in Rip. "I'll have to give up calling you father, Bleecker. You are my brother now."

"I don't think we should carry a joke too far," said his father severely.

"It's no joke," said Kip. "Is it, Father Corky?"

"See here, confound you, don't get funny," snapped Corky from the head of the table. "You forget the servants."

"I'm not ashamed to have them hear me call you father, Corky," protested Rip. "I'll shout it from the house top if you think there's any doubt about my sincerity."

"Don't tease, Ripley," said Toots. "Your poor brother is dreadfully embarrassed."

"You must go with me to the dressmaker's tomorrow, girls," said the Grand Duchess, effectually putting a stop to the discussion. "I shall be there all day trying on gowns, and I want your opinions."

"Didn't you have anything made in Paris, Mother?" cried Toots and Beppy in unison.

"She did," said Corky emphatically. "We paid duty on seventy-three gowns, to say nothing of other things."

"But they are all out of fashion by this time," said Mrs. Corky, joyously. "They are at least three months old. I'm getting everything new. The season promises to be an unusually brilliant one, doesn't it, dear?"

Every one waited for Gorky's reply. He appeared to have swallowed something the wrong way. It was just like them to wait, CONFOUND them, thought he resentfully.

"Yes," said he, so succinctly that the four ladies were bitterly disappointed. For them, the topic called for the most elaborate treatment. "I shall give a big ball right after the holidays," said the Grand Duchess, determined to keep the subject going. "Corky and I have been going over the list of invitations this week. We mean to make it very select. On a rough estimate, we figure that the affair won't cost a cent less than fifty thousand—"

"My dear!" cried Corky, rapping violently on the table with his fork in his agitation.

"That's a pearl-handled fork," his wife reminded him, going very red under her rouge.

At this juncture Jefferson arose and, clearing his throat, began a toast to the brides.

"On your feet, gentlemen! Here's to the four Mrs. Van Winkles, the fourest of the fair—I mean the fairest of the four—ouch!—the fairest—of—the—fair. May they never know an hour of remorse! May their hearts always beat time to the tune of love we shall sing into their lovely ears, and may they be kind enough to forgive us our transgressions while they listen to our eternal and everlasting song! Drink, gentlemen!"

As the four gentlemen drained their glasses, the four ladies applauded the eloquent Jeff.

"You must write that out for Corky, Jefferson," cried his mother-in-law. "He may have an opportunity to spring it—"

"Ahem!" barked Corky, quite viciously.

"I am sure we shall all love one another and be happy to the end of our days," cried Mrs. Bleecker Van Winkle, an extremely handsome woman of thirty-three.

"Good for you, Mother!" shouted Rip, with enthusiasm and every one laughed, Corky the loudest of all.

Beppy rose half way out of her seat and peered down the table in the direction of her sister Mary.

"Stop holding hands, you silly things!" she cried, shaking her finger at Bleecker Van Winkle and his wife.

"I'm not holding hands," cried Mary.

"She was feeling my pulse," explained the old gentleman hastily.

As a matter of fact, when Mary undertook to bestow upon her husband the caress known as "holding hands" she invariably took his wrist between her thumb and forefinger and absent-mindedly counted ten or twelve before realising her mistake.

The father of the three young men took this particular moment to revoke, in a very diplomatic way, the sentence he had declared a few months earlier in the year. Without saying it in so many words, he gave them to understand that he considered their fortunes made and warmly congratulated them upon the successful issue of their endeavours. He made so bold as to state that he took upon his own shoulders all of the trivial mistakes they may have made during years of adolescence, and gave to them the glory of achieving success when failure might have been their lot because of the foolish adoration of a doting parent. It was a very pretty speech, but the boys noticed that he carefully refrained from acknowledging that they had made men of themselves.

"And now," said he, in conclusion, "permit me to paraphrase the toast of that amiable ancestor whom fiction has given to us, the ancient Rip whose days will be longer than ours, whose life will run smoothly through centuries to come: 'May we all live long—and prosper'!"

They drank it standing.

The Grand Duchess beamed. "So that dear old gentleman WAS your ancestor after all. How glad I am to know it!"

"Yes, my dear daughter," said her venerable son-in-law, running his fingers through his niveous thatch, "he was the first of the time-wasting Van Winkles."