She was tired
and her head ached, but she said nothing. She found the shawl, of
red-and-black plaid, and spread it over the old lady's shoulders.

"I didn't say for you to put it on," remarked Grandmother, sourly. "If
I'd wanted you to put it on me, I'd have said so. Guess I ain't so old
yet but what I can put on my own shawl. What I want it for is to wrap up
my hands in."

"Where's my shawl?" demanded Aunt Matilda, entering the room at that
moment.

Rosemary found the other shawl, of blue-and-brown plaid, and silently
offered it to the owner.

Aunt Matilda inclined her grey head toward Rosemary. "You can put it on
me if you like. I ain't ashamed to say I'm cold when I am, and if I
wanted to wrap up my hands, I'd get my mittens--I wouldn't take a whole
shawl."

"You ain't got no reason to be cold, as I see," remarked Grandmother,
sharply. "Folks what lays abed till almost seven o'clock ought to be
nice and warm unless they're lazy. P'r'aps if you moved around more,
your blood would warm you."

"Better try it," Matilda suggested, pointedly.

An angry flush mounted to Grandmother's temples, where the thin white
hair was drawn back so tightly that it must have hurt. "I've moved
around some in my day," she responded, shrilly, "but I never got any
thanks for it. What with sweepin' and dustin' and scrubbin' and washin'
and ironin' and bringin' up children and feedin' pigs and cows and
chickens and churnin' and waitin' on your father, it's no wonder I'm a
helpless cripple with the misery in my back."

[Sidenote: Head of the House]

"Dried peaches again," Matilda observed, scornfully, as Rosemary put a
small saucer of fruit before her. "Who told you to get dried peaches?"

"I did, if you want to know," Grandmother snorted. "This is my house,
ain't it?"

"I've heard tell that it was," Matilda answered, "and I'm beginnin' to
believe it."

Miss Matilda was forty-six, but, in the pitiless glare of the odorous
lamp, she looked much older. Her hair was grey and of uneven length, so
that short, straight hair continually hung about her face, without even
the saving grace of fluffiness. Her eyes were steel-blue and cold, her
nose large and her mouth large also. Her lips drooped at the corners and
there was a wart upon her chin.

Grandmother also had a wart, but it was upon her nose. Being a friendly
and capable sort of wart, it held her steel-bowed spectacles at the
proper angle for reading or knitting. During convers