er, over to Center, who is
ninety-seven, and grandmother White was ninety-five on Christmas day."

"Tell me about them. Are they well? Do they get about?"

"Grandmother White is spry as a cricket, as people say. She sews and
knits and doesn't wear glasses."

"That's something like." The incident cheered her amazingly. "And the
other old lady?"

"She is quite deaf and walks about with a cane, but I think she's pretty
well." Helen did not say she was cross and crabbed and a trial to her
grand-daughter's family. It really was sad to live past the time when
people wanted you. But couldn't you be sweet and comforting? Must old
age be queer and disagreeable?

"I shall try to live to a hundred," said Mrs. Van Dorn. "Let me see--I
wish you'd read something bright, about people having good times. Why do
writers put so much sorrow in stories? It is bad enough to have it in
the world."

Helen ran up and brought down a pile of novels that Mr. Disbrowe had
selected in the city. But one did not suit and another did not suit.

"We will look at the sun going down. What wonderful sunsets I have
seen!"

"Tell me about them," entreated Helen.

"There was one at the Golden Gate, California. No one ever could paint
anything like it." Mrs. Van Dorn looked across the sky as if she saw it
again. She was an excellent hand at description. Then the men were
coming in, the dinner bell rang.

"I won't bother to dress, I'll play invalid."

Helen pushed the chair in a sheltered place, and laid the shawl over the
back of a hall chair. Everybody congratulated Mrs. Van Dorn, and she
said with a little laugh that she thought it was the weather, and she
had been playing off, that she hadn't been really ill.

"I think we all gave in to the weather," said Mrs. Lessing. "I had a
touch of rheumatism. You can have a fire in wet cool weather, but when
it is wet hot weather, you can hardly get your breath and feel
smothered."

"It's been a dreadful week for trade," remarked Mr. Disbrowe. "I haven't
made my salt. Perhaps it would have been better to have tried pepper."

They all laughed at that.

"Mrs. Dayton has tried both salt and pepper and been cheerful as a
lark," said Mrs. Pratt.

"And plenty of sugar," laughed Mrs. Dayton. "Though I confess I have
been tried with jelly that wouldn't jell. The weather has been bad for
that."

"And Miss Helen has kept rosy. She has been good to look at," subjoined
Mrs. Disbrowe.

Mrs. Van Dorn smiled