Like mother like daughter
Del was often irritated by her mother. People used to tell her, “your mother knows such a lot of things, my,” and Del knew that they were not complementing her. She saw that to some people, “maybe to most people, knowledge was just oddity; it stuck out like warts”. The irony of this situation was that, in spite of her irritation, Del shared her “mother’s appetite” herself. She valued knowledge.
Adventures
When Uncle Betty returned home from the town, where he was supposed to meet with a woman he was in correspondence with, he “looked at us with the air of one arriving home from a long journey whose adventures can never properly be told, though he knows he will have to try”. The irony of this situation was in the fact that it was as adventurous as it looked judging by Uncle Benny’s behavior. He had left his house being a bachelor and returned home with a wife and a child.
Always ready
When Uncle Benny announced that he got married, Del’s father congratulated him. “Made your mind the minute you saw her, was that it?” – asked her father. Uncle Benny “chuckled nervously”. The irony was that “everything was set up for the wedding” by the woman’s relatives. It was set up before he got there. “They had the preacher and the ring bought”. Nobody asked Benny whether he wanted to marry her or not.
