ation, she peered
over her spectacles, and sometimes, to the discomfort of a sensitive
observer, the steel frame appeared to divide her eyes horizontally.

[Sidenote: All Wrong]

They were very dark, beady eyes, set close together. At times they
gleamed with the joy of conflict, but they always expressed a certain
malicious cunning. With a single glance, she could make Rosemary feel
mentally undressed. Had the girl's forehead been transparent, like the
crystal of a watch, with the machinery of thought and emotion fully
exposed to the eye of a master-mechanic, her sensation could not have
differed from the helpless awe her grandmother so easily inspired.

Of course the breakfast was not right--it never was. The dried peaches
were too sweet for one and not sweet enough for the other. Grandmother
wanted her oatmeal cooked to a paste, but Aunt Matilda, whose teeth were
better, desired something that must be chewed before it was swallowed,
and unhesitatingly said so. The coffee was fated to please neither,
though, as Rosemary found courage to say, you couldn't expect good
coffee on Friday when the same grounds had been used ever since Sunday
morning.

"I'd like to know what makes you so high and mighty all of a sudden,"
said Grandmother. "Coffee's just like tea--as long as colour comes into
it when it's boiled, it's good. My mother always used the same grounds
for a week for a family of eight, and she didn't hear no complaints,
neither. You ain't boiled this long enough--that's what's the matter."

[Sidenote: The Common Task]

Aunt Matilda muttered something about "beggars being choosers," and
Rosemary pushed her plate away wearily. She had not tasted her
breakfast.

Grandmother arose and noisily blew out the lamp, regardless of the fact
that Matilda had not finished eating. "Now, Rosemary," she said,
briskly, "after you get the dishes done and the kitchen cleaned up, I
want you should go to the post-office and get my paper. When you come
back, you can do the sweepin' and dustin' down here and I can set in the
kitchen while you're doin' it. Then you can make the beds and do the
up-stairs work and then go to the store. By the time you're ready to go
to the store, I'll have decided what you're to get."

"And," continued Aunt Matilda, pushing back her chair, "this afternoon
you can help me cut out some underclothes and get 'em basted together."
She never attempted any sort of housework, being pathetically vain of
her