“Well, see, you gotta understand – he has a beard, and he has a beard, and he has a beard – it's kind of a mature Ludlow man fashion accessory, but you gotta watch the ones whose hair doesn't match their beard because people with good sense dye both their hair and their beard instead leaving one to look old and the other to look stupid.”
Ten-year-old Glendella Ludlow was looking at pictures of her Ludlow families – the one she had been adopted into, that of fabulously bearded Capt. R.E. Ludlow out of the line of Tancred Ludlow, as compared with the one she had been adopted out of, out of the line of Tarquin Ludlow I.
“But, you see, Great Uncle Tarquin IV has his beard life together, too,” she was saying to eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow, her new adopted sibling. “It's not about the line of Ludlows: it's about spotting which ones have good sense.”
“Well, looking at the situations here, you definitely needed to get on over here with us,” she said, “because you know Papa has his beard situation on lock, and all his brothers and his dad and his uncles, but your bio grandfather … that's just sad.”
“And then there's Cousin Croesus, and Cousin Midas,” Glendella said.
“Sad,” Eleanor said. “I mean, this situation here – a blond toupee, and didn't even match the beard dye right. But then again, my brothers Robert and Grayson once tie-dyed their hair, so, maybe it's a phase or something.”
“Ellie,” Glendella said, “it's one thing when you are five and six and the people helping you are seven and eight. It's another thing when you are fifty-six and seventy-eight, acting like five, six, seven, and eight.”
“Well,” Eleanor said, “they do say, 'once a man, twice a child.'”
“And that's the other thing,” Glendella said. “Robert and Grayson are the two sweetest little brothers anyone could ever have, and when they get old, if they just go back to that, it's going to be real easy for them at the old age home because everyone is going to fall in love with them there. It's bad when you show in your old age that you grew up a spoiled brat and are returning to the same thing.”
“Yeah, that is going to be a major problem,” Eleanor said. “Some people need their crayons taken away from them for a little while so they can calm down and think straight and stop drawing all over the walls, and some people need their hair dye taken away from them so they can think straight and not be photographed like this.”
“Exactly,” Glendella said, “because, no.”