Yet as Maude and Frank learn, in this charming novel from the turn of the last century, nothing planned ever goes according to expectation -- and surprising mischief is to be encountered in the workings-out of the most petty of details.

Still, in the end, all ruffles seem to smooth out. These are all the result of love, after all -- of would-be domestic happiness, of two lives trying to find any way possible to intertwine together

Even during the years he was hard at work on his famous series featuring detective Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle continued to enjoy writing other types of fiction -- as this light-hearted look into one of our oldest social institutions makes amusingly clear.