Hastings, with a very little Tracy
and not a grain of German in him, 'but very nice, very nice; and you are
his grandmother, too, and I am his grandfather, whom he once called an
old crazy man because I wouldn't let him play in my room with a little
alligator which his Aunt Dolly sent him from Florida.'

'Well, you be crazy, ain't you?' the boy says, seating himself upon the
bench and nestling his brown head against the arm of the man, who
replies:

'I don't know whether I am or not, but if to be very happy in the
companionship of the living and of the dead, and to have one as real as
the other is craziness, then I am crazy.'

And then, for the hundredth time, he tells to the boy, and to the baby,
too, who seems to understand the story of the carpet-bag and the little
girl, their mother, whom the boy, their father, found in the Tramp House
one wintry morning years ago, and carried through the snow. And Tracy
starts to his feet with dilating eyes, and says:

'I just wish I'd been there. I'd carried mamma, and wouldn't let her
drop in the snow as papa did. Where was I then, grandpa?'

But grandpa does not answer, and begins the story of the cherries and
the ladder, which Tracy likes even better than that of the carpet bag,
particularly the part where the white sun-bonnet appears in the window,
and the shrill voice calls out: 'Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don't you
want some cherries?'

This Arthur makes very dramatic and real, and Tracy holds his breath;
and sometimes when the question is more real than usual, little Gretchen
puts out her hand, and says:

'_Iss_, div me some.'

Then the boy and the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off after a passing
butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the baby and the other
Gretchen beside him, until the former falls asleep, and he takes her to
the crib he has had put in the bay window under the picture which smiles
down upon the sleeping infant, whose guardian angel it seems to be.

The Tramp House has been repaired and renovated, the table mended, and
the rat hole stopped up; and the trio frequently go there together, for
it is the children's play-house, where Arthur is sometimes a horse,
sometimes a bear, and sometimes a whole menagerie of animals. Once or
twice he has been the dead woman on the table, with little Gretchen
beside him in the carpet-bag, and Tracy tugging with all his might to
lift her out; but after the day when he let her fall, and gave her a big
bump up