o carry
her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were
looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew
older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often
thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and
energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill,
and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly
desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her
laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a
lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong
woman, of unusual endurance.

After I was dressed, I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was
dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with a
stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under one
of the windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in from
work.

While my grandmother was busy about supper, I settled myself on the
wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat--he caught
not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of
yellow sunlight on the floor travelled back toward the stairway, and
grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the
new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbours. We
did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so
many years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were all
seated at the supper table, then she asked Jake about the old place and
about our friends and neighbours there.

My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and
spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once his
deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him.
The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly,
snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of
an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.

Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were
bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and
regular--so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He
had a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a
young man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.

As we sat at the table, Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert gl