g, "Had
_you_ ever a grandmother, grandmother dear?"

"Oh, Molly, how can you be so silly?" said Ralph and Sylvia, together.

"I'm not silly," said Molly. "It is you that are silly not to understand
what I mean. I am sure anybody might. Of course I mean can grandmother
remember her--did she know her? Supposing anybody's grandmother died
before they were born, then they wouldn't ever have had one, would they
now?"

Molly sat up on the rug, and tossed back her hair out of her eyes,
convinced that her logic was unanswerable.

"You shouldn't begin by saying 'anybody's grandmother,'" remarked Ralph.
"You put anybody in the possessive case, which means, of course, that the
grandmother belonged to the anybody, and _then_ you make out that the
anybody never had one."

Molly retorted by putting her fingers in her ears and shaking her head
vehemently at her brother. "Be quiet, Ralph," she said. "What's the good
of muddling up what I say, and making my head feel _so_ uncomfortable
when you know quite well what I _mean_? Please, grandmother dear, will
you go on talking as soon as I take my fingers out of my ears, and then
he will have to leave off puzzling me."

"And what am I to talk about?" asked grandmother.

"Tell us about your grandmother. If you remember things long ago so
nicely, you must remember story sort of things of then," said Molly
insinuatingly.

"I really don't, my dear child. Not just at this moment, anyhow."

"Well, tell us _about_ your grandmother: what was she like? was she like
you?"

Grandmother shook her head.

"That I cannot say, my dear; I have no portrait of her, nor have I ever
seen one since I have been grown up. She died when I was about fifteen,
and as my father was not the eldest son, few, if any, heirlooms fell to
his share. And a good many years before my grandmother's death--at the
time of her husband's death--the old home was sold, and she came to live
in a curious old-fashioned house, in the little county town a few miles
from where we lived. This old house had belonged to her own family for
many, many years, and, as all her brothers were dead, it became hers. She
was very proud of it, and even during my grandfather's life they used to
come in from the country to spend the worst of the winter there. Dear me!
what a long time back it takes us! were my grandmother living now, she
would be--let me see--my father would have been a hundred years old by
now. I was the youngest of a large