Grandmother Dear | Page 2

you; I am not so young as I have been, you know."
Molly looked up with some puzzle in her eyes at this.
"Not so young as you have been, grandmother dear?" she repeated.
"Of course not," said Ralph. "And you're not either, Molly. Once you were a baby in long clothes, and, barring the long clothes, I don't know but what----"
"Hush, Ralph. Don't begin teasing her," said Sylvia in a low voice, not lost, however, upon grandmother.
What was lost upon grandmother?
"And what were you all so busy chattering about when I interrupted you just now?" she inquired, when they were all seated round the tea-table, and thanks to the nice cold chicken and ham, and rolls and butter and tea-cakes, and all manner of good things, the children fast "losing their appetites."
Sylvia blushed and looked at Ralph; Ralph grew much interested in the grounds at the bottom of his tea-cup; only Molly, Molly the irrepressible, looked up briskly.
"Oh, nothing," she replied; "at least nothing particular."
"Dear me! how odd that you should all three have been talking at once about anything so uninteresting as nothing particular," said grandmother, in a tone which made them all laugh.
"It wasn't exactly about nothing particular," said Molly: "it was about you, grandmother dear."
"Molly!" said Sylvia reproachfully, but Molly was not so easily to be snubbed.
"We were wishing," she continued, "that you had a gold-headed stick, and then you'd be quite perfect."
It was grandmother's and aunty's turn to laugh now.
"Only," Molly went on, "Ralph said perhaps you'd beat us with it, and I said no, most likely you'd turn us into frogs or mice, you know."
"'Frogs or mice, I know,' but indeed I don't know," said grandmother; "why should I wish to turn my boy and girl children into frogs and mice?"
"If we were naughty, I meant," said Molly. "Oh, Sylvia, you explain--I always say things the wrong way."
"It was I that said you looked like a fairy godmother," said Sylvia, blushing furiously, "and that put it into Molly's head about the frogs and mice."
"But the only fairy godmother I remember that did these wonderful things turned mice into horses to please her god-daughter. Have you not got hold of the wrong end of the story, Molly?" said grandmother.
"The wrong end and beginning and middle too, I should say," observed Ralph.
"Yes, grandmother dear, I always do," said Molly, complacently. "I never remember stories or anything the right way, my head is so funnily made."
"When you can't find your gloves, because you didn't put them away carefully, is it the fault of the shape of the chest of drawers?" inquired grandmother quietly.
"Yes, I suppose so,--at least, no, I mean, of course it isn't," replied Molly, taking heed to her words half-way through, when she saw that they were all laughing at her.
Grandmother smiled, but said no more.
"What a wool-gathering little brain it is," she said to herself.
When she smiled, all the children agreed together afterwards, she looked more like a fairy godmother than ever. She was really a very pretty old lady. Never very tall, with age she had grown smaller, though still upright as a dart; the "November roses" in her cheeks were of their kind as sweet as the June ones that nestled there long ago--ah! so long ago now; and the look in her eyes had a tenderness and depth which can only come from a life of unselfishness, of joy and much sorrow too--a life whose lessons have been well and dutifully learnt, and of which none has been more thoroughly taken home than that of gentle judgment of, and much patience with, others.
While they are all finishing their tea, would you, my boy and girl friends, like to know who they were--these three, Ralph, Sylvia, and Molly, whom I want to tell you about, and whom I hope you will love? When I was a little girl I liked to know exactly about the children in my books, each of whom had his or her distinct place in my affections. I liked to know their names, their ages, all about their homes and their relations most exactly, and more than once I was laughed at for writing out a sort of genealogical tree of some of my little fancy friends' family connections. We need not go quite so far as that, but I will explain to you about these new little friends of yours enough for you to be able to find out the rest for yourselves.
They had never seen their grandmother before, never, that is to say, in the girls' case, and in Ralph's "not to remember her." Ralph was fourteen now, Sylvia thirteen, and Molly about a year and a half younger. More than seven years ago their mother had died, and since then they had been living with their father, whose