like each other.'

It was grandmother, dear old grandmother, who had come from her home far
away in the country to see her son's wife and children, and to do all
she could to help them. And grandmother had not been long in the house
before Poppy felt sure that God had sent her, and that she was just the
help the poor child so much needed.

Poor old grandmother! she was hot and tired and dusty, and she had been
travelling in the heat for many hours on that hot summer's morning. She
sat down on a chair by the door, fanning herself with her red cotton
pocket handkerchief, and kissing Poppy again and again, as she called
her 'my lad's bonny bairn,' and told her that she was the very picture
of what her father was when he was her age, and how her John Henry was
the best scholar in all Thurswalden School, and she felt sure his bairn
must be a clever little girl too.

CHAPTER VIII.

JACKY AND JEMMY.

'Now, my dear,' said grandmother, when she had rested for a minute or
two, 'where's my lad's wife? Your mother, my lass; where is she?'

'Oh, she's in bed, grandmother!' said Poppy. 'She's very ill, is my
mother.'

'I'll go up and see her,' said the old woman. 'To think that my John
Henry has been a married man these ten years, and I've never seen his
wife!'

But when she _did_ see John Henry's wife, grandmother sat down and
sobbed like a child. She was so white, so thin, so worn, that the kind
old woman's heart was filled with love and with shame--love for her poor
suffering daughter-in-law, shame that her son, the lad of whom she had
been so proud, should have left her when she needed him so much.

How long grandmother would have cried it is impossible to say, had not a
dismal wail come from one side of the bed, followed almost immediately
by another dismal wail from the other side of the bed. It was Enoch and
Elijah, who had fallen asleep for a few minutes whilst Poppy was
downstairs, but who had waked up at the sound of a strange voice.
Grandmother sprang from her seat as soon as she heard them cry. She had
not seen the babies before, for they were covered by the bed-clothes.
She held them one in each arm, and kissed them again and again.

'Oh, my bonny, bonny bairns!' she said; 'my own little darling lambs! To
think that God Almighty has sent you back again! Why, I'm like Job, my
lass; I lost them five-and-forty years ago;--ay, but it seems only
five-and-forty days. Oh! my own beautiful little lads. I kic