row old gracefully and
with resignation. She had put up an equally determined fight against
age, and it was only when the remorseless calendar proved her to be
sixty-five that she resigned from the struggle, washed the dye out of
her hair and the make-up from her face and retired to that old house.
Not even then, however, did she resign from all activity and remain
contented to sit with her hands in her lap and prepare herself for the
next world. This one still held a certain amount of joy, and she
concentrated all the vitality that remained with her to the perfect
running of her house. At eleven o'clock every morning the tap of her
stick on the polished floors was the signal of her arrival, and if
every man and woman of the menage was not actively at work, she knew
the reason why. Her tongue was still as sharp as the blade of a razor,
and for sloppiness she had no mercy. Careless maids trembled before her
tirades, and strong men shook in their shoes under her biting phrases.
At seventy, with her snowy hair, little face that had gone into as many
lines as a dried pippin, bent, fragile body and tiny hands twisted by
rheumatism, she looked like one of the old women in a Grimm's fairy
tale who frightened children and scared animals and turned giants into
cowards.

She drew up in front of the frustrated girl, stretched out her white
hand lined with blue veins and began to tap her on the
shoulder--announcing in that irritating manner that she had a complaint
to make.

"My dear," she said, "when you write letters to your little friends or
your sentimental mother, bear in mind that the place for ink is on the
note paper and not on the carpet."

"Yes, Grandmother."

"Try to remember also that if you put your hand behind a candle you can
blow it out without scattering hot grease on the wall paper."

"Yes, Grandmother"

"There is one other thing, if I may have your patience. You are not
required to be a Columbus to discover that there is a basket for soiled
linen in your bedroom. It is a large one and eager to fulfill its
function. The floor of your clothes closet is intended for your shoes
only. Will you be so good as to make a note of these things?"

"Yes, Grandmother."

Ink, candle grease, wash basket--what did they matter in the scheme of
life, with spring tapping at the window? With a huge effort Joan forced
back a wild burst of insurrection, and remained standing in what she
hoped was the correct attitude of a pr