cent, of course you are not. We are all more or
less imperfect creatures, I suppose, but--well, all is, if I were
your grandma, I wouldn't let you bother your head about such things.
It is hard enough for the preachers to settle some things for us and
themselves, so how do you suppose a baby like you is going to get
the gist of it?"

"If you were my grandma what would you do?" asked Marian coming to
the point.

"I'd give you interesting story-books to read, and see that you had
healthy-minded playfellows. You ought to be going to school; you are
enough bigger than my Annie was when she first went." This was a
point upon which Mrs. Hunt felt very keenly. She thought Mr. and
Mrs. Otway had not the proper ideas about bringing up children and
that Marian was too much with older persons. "I would send her off
to school quick as a wink," she had more than once said to Mrs.
Otway, but her remark had been received with only a smile, and one
could not follow out an argument when another would not argue, so
kind Mrs. Hunt had been able only to air her opinions to Mrs.
Perkins and her other neighbors, and once in a while to let Marian
know how she felt about her.

She had lost a little girl about Marian's age and made a point of
being especially good to the old-fashioned child who lived in the
brick house at the end of the street. The other houses were all
white or gray or brown, built plainly, and were either shingled or
clap-boarded affairs so that the brick house was a thing apart and
its occupants were usually considered the aristocracy of the place.
The older men called Grandpa Otway, "Professor," and the younger
ones said, "Good-morning, doctor," when they met him.

At the college where he had taught for many years he was still
remembered as an absent-minded, gentle but decided person, strong in
his opinions, proud and reticent, good as gold, but finding it hard
to forgive the only son who left home and married against the wishes
of his parents. When baby Marian's mother died her father had
written home, asking that his motherless baby might be taken in and
reared in the American land which he still loved. So one day Marian
arrived in charge of a plain German couple, but her father had not
seen her since and he still lived in far off Berlin. Once a year he
wrote to his little daughter and she answered the letter through her
grandmother. The letter always came the first of the year and the
latest one had given an accoun