occasionally
to cup one hand behind her ear, but her snapping eyes were as bright as
a monkey's and her lips, over toothless gums, worked constantly with a
rotary motion as she talked and laughed. On each side of her were
grouped other old ladies--Mrs. Sark, Mrs. Mulkey, Mrs. Hansen, and Mrs.
Mussoo--her friends since the days, fifty years before, when they had
crossed the plains in hooded wagons, and fought out their simple and
heroic destinies on these strange western prairies.

They had borne children, comforting and caring for each other in the
wilderness; they had talked of wolves and of Indians while trusting
little hands caught their knees and ignorant little lips pulled at
their breasts; they had known fire and flood and famine, crude offense
and cruder punishment; they had seen the Indians and the buffalo go
with the Missions and the sheep; they had followed the gold through its
sensational rise to its sensational fall, and had held the wheat
dubiously in their fingers before ever California's dark soil knew
it--had wondered whether the first apple trees really might come to
blossom and bear where the pines were cleared away.

And now, with the second and third generation, had come schools and
post-offices, cable cars and gaslight; villages were cities; crossroads
were towns. At seventy-eight, Grandma Kelly was far from ready for her
nunc dimittis. Great days had been, no doubt, but great days were also
to be. Children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren kept the house
swarming with life, and she could never have enough of it.

The air, never too fresh in the Hawkes's house, was hot and charged
with odours of cheap cologne, of powder, of human bodies, and of
perspiration-soaked garments. The very gaslights screamed above the din
as if they found it contagious. Large crayon portraits decorated the
walls, that of the late Mr. Kelly having attached to its frame the
sheaf of wheat that had lain on his coffin. On the walls also were the
large calendars of insurance companies, and one or two china plaques in
plush frames. A bead portiere hung between the two parlours, constantly
clicking and catching as the guests swarmed to and fro. All the chairs
in the house had been set about the walls, and all were occupied. A
disk on the phonograph was duly revolving, in charge of a hysterical
girl in blue silk and a flushed, humorous young man, but the music was
almost unheard.

Whatever their attitude toward this merr