cheerfully.
"Can't you sit a while? There isn't much for young 'uns to do, and I
says to your uncle it was a good thing there was two of you--at least
you can talk."

"What lovely rugs!" exclaimed Betty, examining the old woman's work.
"See, Bob, they're braided, just like the colonial rag rugs you see
in pictures. Can't I do some?"

"Sure you can braid," said the old woman. "It's easy. I'll show you,
and then I'll sew some while you braid."

"Let me braid, too," urged Bob. "My fingers aren't all thumbs, if I
am a boy."

"Well now," fluttered Grandma Watterby, pleased as could be, "I don't
know when I've had somebody give me a lift. Working all by yourself
is tedious-like, and Emma don't get a minute to set down. My brother
used to make lots of mats to sell; he could braid 'em tighter than I
can."

She showed Betty how to braid and then started Bob on three strips.
Then she took up the sewing of strips already braided.

"We were talking to the Indian this morning," said Betty idly. "He
told us a lot about Indians--how wherever they have been oil has been
discovered. Does he really know?"

"Ki has been to Government school, and knows a heap," nodded Grandma
Watterby. "What he tells you's likely to be so. I don't rightly know
myself about what they have to do with the oil, but Will was saying
only the other night that the Osage Indians have been paid millions
of dollars within the last few years."

Her keen old eyes were sparkling, and she was sewing with the
quick, darting motion that they soon learned was characteristic of
everything she did. She must be very old, Bob decided, watching her
shriveled hands, knotted by rheumatism, and the idea of age put
another thought into his head.

"Mr. Gordon said you'd lived on this farm for sixty years, Grandma,"
the boy said suddenly. It had been explained to them that the old
lady liked every one to use that title. "You must know 'most every
one in the neighborhood."

"Fred Watterby brought me here the day we were married," the old
woman replied, letting her sewing fall into her lap. "Sixty years ago
come next October. I was married on my seventeenth birthday."

She sat in a little reverie, and Bob and Betty braided quietly,
unwilling to disturb her, although the same question was in their
minds. Then Grandma Watterby took up her sewing with a sigh, and the
spell was broken.

"Know everybody in the neighborhood?" she echoed Bob's statement.
"Yes, I used to. But