e's side it inferred that she would not
demean herself to use means so simple and abject as plain flattery even
with a "camsteary" daughter.

But they smiled at each other, not ill-content, and as my grandmother
passed to the dresser she paused by the great oak chair long enough to
murmur, "She's coming round!" But my grandfather only smiled and looked
towards the door that led to the still-room, pantries and so forth, as
if he found the time long without his second pot of sugar ale.

He was something of a diplomat, my grandfather.

It was while sitting thus, with the second drink of harmless "Jamaica"
before him, my aunt and grandmother crossing each other ceaselessly on
silent feet, that a knock came to the front door.

Now in Galloway farm houses there is a front door, but no known use for
it has been discovered, except to _be_ a door. Later, it was the custom
to open it to let in the minister on his stated visitations, and later
still to let out the dead. But at the period of which I write it was a
door and nothing more.

Both of these other uses are mere recent inventions. The shut front door
of my early time stood blistering and flaking in the hot sun, or
soaking--crumbling, and weather-beaten--during months of bad weather.
For, with a wide and noble entrance behind upon the yard, so
well-trodden and convenient, so charged with the pleasant press of
entrants and exodants, so populous with affairs, from which the chickens
had to be "shooed" and the moist noses of questing calves pushed aside
twenty times a day--why should any mortal think of entering by the front
door of the house. First of all it was the front door. Next, no one knew
whether it would open or not, though the odds were altogether against
it. Lastly, it was a hundred miles from anywhere and opened only upon a
stuffy lobby round which my grandmother usually had her whole Sunday
wardrobe hung up in bags smelling of lavender to guard against the
moths.

Nevertheless, the knock sounded distinctly enough from the front door.

"Some of the bairns playing a trick," said my grandmother tolerantly,
"let them alone, Janet, and they will soon tire o't!"

But Jen had showed so much of the unwonted milk of human kindness that
she felt she must in some degree retrieve her character. She waited,
therefore, for the second rap, louder than the first, then lifted a wand
from the corner and went "down-the-house," quietly as she did all
things.

Aunt Jen conc