Grandmother Dear | Page 2

see you are not very tired, but you must be hungry. Remember that
you've travelled a good way to-day."
"Only from London, grandmother dear," said Molly; "that isn't very
far."

"And the day after to-morrow you have to travel a long way farther,"
continued her grandmother. "You must get early to bed, and keep
yourselves fresh for all that is before you. Aunty says she is very
hungry, so you little people must be so too. Yes, dears, you may run
downstairs first, and I'll come quietly after 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