nd my Aunt Jen, who had once been "in a place"
before. Aunt Jen would go, but--she would take her tongue with her. She
had her mother's command of language, but was utterly destitute of her
tact, lacking also, as was natural, the maternal instinct. As, in a
moment of exasperation my grandmother once said of her, "Our Jinnet is
dried up like a crab-tree in the east wind!"

She would certainly undo all that Mistress Mary Lyon had done, and "that
puir young lassie" (as she called Miss Irma) carried a warlike flash in
her eye which warned the rugged grandmotherly heart that she and our
Aunt Jen could not long bide at peace in the same house.

My mother might have done, as far as temper was concerned, but she
wanted what grandmother called the "needcessary birr." Besides which she
had more than enough to do in caring for her own house, mending my
father's clothes and misinforming the public as to Post Office
regulations. On the whole, though she loved her married daughter, I
think Mary Lyon was not a little sorry for my father, John MacAlpine, in
his choice of a housekeeper. I could see this by the occasional descents
she made upon our house, and the way she had of going about the rooms,
setting things to rights, silent save for a running comment of soft
sniffs upon the nose of contempt--the while my mother, after a
sympathetic glance at me, devoted herself to silent prayer that
grandmother would not light upon anything very bad.

With my grandmother, to fail in the due ordering of a house was a
cardinal sin. And my poor mother sinned, not indeed by intention,
hardly even in labour, but in that appearance of easy perfection, which
in a household is the result of excellent plans thoroughly and timeously
carried out. She was apt to be found late of an afternoon in a chair
with a book--and the dinner dishes still unwashed. Then Agnes Anne, my
sister, would come in without a word. Her school frock would be quickly
shrouded under a great coarse apron. If I happened to be within doors I
was beckoned to assist. If not, not--and Agnes Anne did them herself
while my mother slept on.

But I do not think that grandmother knew this, for she very generally
ignored Agnes Anne altogether, having a decided preference for boys in a
family. It fell out, therefore, that when she came a little shamefacedly
to consult my father, as she sometimes did in days of difficulty--for
under a show of contempt she often really submitted to his judgment