or on your hurried way to the
nearest candy-shop, she would scare you almost stiff by calling you
back, and say:

"Wait a minute, Willie, I found another one that I didn't know was in
here!"

And then you kissed her wrinkled, soft check and ran away thinking,
after all, grandmother was pretty good.

Good?

Can a woman stick to a man through sixty-odd years--and keep his linen
and his broadcloth--and bear him children--and make them into fine
wives and husbands--and take them back to her bosom when their mates
turn against them--and raise a bunch of riotous grandchildren--and
manage such a household as ours with never a complaint--get up at five
o'clock every morning and sit up till half-after nine o'clock every
night--busy all the time--and nurse her own and other folks' ailments
without a murmur--and submerge self completely in her constant doing
for others--can a frail woman so live for eighty-six years and be
anything less than good?

And then, at the end of the long journey she was still trudging
patiently and gladly along, side by side with Grandfather--making less
fuss over the years--old pain in her knees than we make now over a
splinter in a finger--going daily and uncomplainingly about her
manifold duties.

And at night, about an hour before bedtime, she would sit down in the
black-upholstered rocker almost behind the big base burner--her first
quiet moment in all the long day--head resting against the chair's high
back--and doze and listen to the fitful conversation in the room, or to
someone reading--giving everything, demanding nothing--as had been her
wont all the long years!

And Christmas eve ... (I'll have to go a bit slow now) ... On Christmas
eve, you remember, when out-of-doors the big snow-flakes were slowly
and softly fluttering down, grandmother would get the huge Bible and
her treasure-box and bring them up to the little round table covered
with its red cloth ... And you'd get a chair and come up close ('cause
you knew what was happening) ... Then she would read you a wonderful
story out of the Bible about the love of God so great that He sent His
only-begotten Son to be a Light unto the World ... and then she'd go
down into that little old card-board treasure-box and find some
Christmas carols printed in beautiful colors on lace-edged cards folded
up just like a fan. She would look down at you over the top of her
specs and tell you how the street minstrels in England used to stand
out