For three years, a young attorney had been taking his brief vacations at a country inn. On his last visit, he had finally begun an affair with the innkeeper's daughter. Eagerly anticipating another exciting visit, he dragged his suitcase up the stairs of the inn and stopped abruptly. There sat his lover with an infant on her lap!
"Helen, why didn't you write when you learned you were pregnant?" he cried. "I would have rushed here, we could have gotten married, and the baby would have my name!"
"Well," she replied, "when my folks found out about my condition, we sat up all night talking and decided it would be better to have a bastard in the family than a lawyer."