"Good-by, Grannie--good-by, Ally," came from several pairs of lips.

Then a clatter downstairs, then a silence--even David had gone away.
On ordinary occasions Alison would have departed quite an hour before
the children, as she always had to be at the shop in good time to
display her excellent taste in the dressing of the windows. To-day she
and Grannie were left behind together.

"You don't look well, Grannie," began the young girl.

"Now, listen, Alison," said Mrs. Reed, speaking in quite a tart voice,
"ef you want to really vex me, you'll talk of my looks. I'm at the
slack time o' life, and a little more color or a little less don't
matter in the least. Ef I were forty and looked pale, or eighty and
looked pale, it might be a subject to worry 'em as love me; being
sixty-eight, I have let off pressure, so to speak, and it don't matter,
not one little bit, whether I'm like a fresh apple or a piece o' dough.
I am goin' out marketing now, and when I come back I'll give you a
fresh lesson in that feather-stitching."

A dismayed look crept into Alison's face; she raised her delicate brows
very slightly, and fixed her clear blue eyes on Grannie. She was about
to speak, but something in the expression on Grannie's face kept her
silent.

"You clear up and have the place tidy against I come back," said the
little woman. "You might make the beds, and set everything in
apple-pie order, ef you've a mind to."

She then walked into her little bedroom, and shut the door behind her.
In three minutes she was dressed to go out, not in the neat drawn
black-silk bonnet, but in an old straw one which had belonged to her
mother, and which was extremely obsolete in pattern. This bonnet had
once been white, but it was now of the deepest, most dingy shade of
yellow-brown. It had a little band of brown ribbon round it, which
ended neatly in a pair of strings; these were tied under Grannie's
chin. Instead of her black cashmere shawl she wore one of very rough
material and texture, and of a sort of zebra pattern, which she had
picked up cheap many and many years ago from a traveling peddler. She
wore no gloves on her hands, but the poor, swollen, painful right hand
was wrapped in a corner of the zebra shawl. On her left arm she
carried her market basket.

"Good-by, child," she said, nodding to her granddaughter. Then she
trotted downstairs and out into the street.

There was no fog to-day--the air was keen and bright, and