"God! How many are there supposed to be?"
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What number of wives is the most shocking to a monogamist? Two would probably be regular shocking. Then their shock would definitely increase to find out the person had three wives. But would the shock continue to grow larger with four or more wives? Or would it max out at three? Because two would feel typical and then if you heard "three wives," you'd have a momentary spike of adrenalin where you think, "Oh! I would have simply guessed two!" But if you heard "four wives," my guess is the spike of adrenalin would be the same as "three wives," meaning you're simply shocked the polygamist has more than two.
In other words, we'd all react like Lew just reacted. If Troth had said, "Go live with your other wife," he'd be all, "I'm a polygamist! Yeesh!" But she says, "Go live with one of your other wives," and his reaction is simply, "More than two?! Yeesh!" I suppose there'd be a flattening of effect in the shock value right up until about 8 or 9 where there'd be a significant increase because it's now become so outlandish. But then I'd guess it would be diminishing returns from there on out. Until maybe triple digits because adding a new column of numbers is a significant marker.
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