c door, hurry into the kitchen where Maggie has
our table waiting ....

* * * * *

Eight o'clock--and we're all tucked away among the feathers again!

Aren't we glad we didn't go down to the river--it would have been a
cold, dismal day--and perhaps they weren't biting today, anyway--and we
should have gotten very wet.

It is still raining, raining hard--pattering unceasingly on the roof
... And the tin eave-troughs are singing their gentle lullaby of
running water trickling from the shingles ... a lullaby so soothing
that we do not hear mother softly open the door ... and come to our
crib and place the little bare arms under the covers and leave a kiss
on the yellow curls and a benediction in the room.

Grandmother

Do you remember the day she lost her glasses? My, such a commotion!
Everybody turned in to hunt for them. Grandmother tramped from one end
of the house to the other--we all searched--upstairs and down--with no
success.

They weren't in the big Bible (we turned the leaves carefully many
times--it was the most likely place). They weren't in either of her
sewing baskets, nor in the cook-book in the kitchen. Grandfather said
she could use one pair of his gold-bowed ones--but shucks! She couldn't
see with anything except those old steel-bowed specs! ...

And then, when she finally sat down and said for the fiftieth time: "I
wonder where those specs are!" ... and put the corner of her apron to
her eyes--I happened to look up, and there they were--on the top of her
head! Been there all the time ... And she enjoyed the joke as much as
we did--a joke that went around the little town and followed her
through all the years within my memory of her.

Sometimes (as often as expedient), you asked her for a penny--never
more, and then:

"Now, Willie, what do you want with a penny? I haven't got it. Run
along now."

"Aw, Gran'ma, don't make a feller tell what he's goin' to buy. I know
you got one--Look'n see! Please, Gran'ma!"

Slowly the wrinkled hand would fumble for that skirt-pocket which was
always so hard to locate--and from its depths there would come the old
worn leather wallet with a strap around it--and slowly, (gee! how
s-l-o-w-l-y),--after much fumbling, during which you were never sure
whether you were going to get it or not ... the penny would come forth
and be placed (with seeming reluctance) in the grimy, dirty boy-hand.
And usually, just as you reached the do