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half-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew
in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen I sniffed a pleasant smell of
gingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickel
trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall,
and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water. When
she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my
bath without help.

"Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right
smart little boy."

It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water
through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed
himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my
grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously,
"Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!" Then she came laughing,
waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens.

She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to 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 traveled 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 neighbors. We did not talk about the farm
in Virginia, which had been her hom