“And you could wheel the chickens in, on the wheelbarrow, for me to feed,” Abbie retorted. Now she ought not to have said that, she was thinking. Why, she ought to be thankful they were so kind. How many mothers could have that number of good homes at their disposal? But she did resent being planned about and talked over. After all they were her children. In spite of their years, she was still their mother. She had never let them run over her and she wasn’t going to now. When they had quite definitely decided on Margaret’s home for her, she spoke up:

“I’ll do nothing of the kind. I’ll stay right here. And kindly let me alone. Because a woman is getting old, has she no rights?”

Eloise was almost openly relieved. Emma knew in her heart that the possibility of certain dramatic situations between the rather high-strung Katherine and her grandmother were now permanently avoided. Grace admitted to herself that it would have been more of a sacrifice for her to give up her work than the others could dream; and Margaret, with a slight sinking sensation, pondered for a moment over the mental picture of the marble-topped stand, the blue plush album and the patent swinging-rocker, rubbing elbows with the furnishings of her artistic house.

So they “let her alone.” But from that time on they said among themselves that mother was childish, that you had to overlook an elderly woman’s vagaries, and that they must drive in more frequently to watch her so that no harm would come to her.

When Wentworth was thirteen, and Laura four, John’s and Eloise’s third child was born. It was a boy and they named him Millard. John telephoned the news to his mother, who was now seventy-one. Abbie hung up the receiver, put on her hat,—a new one since the demise of the rusty black with the itinerant ornament,—and walked over to Cedartown. She could not wait longer to see the baby. She had borne six children, herself, and this was her seventh grandchild, but she experienced that same excited interest over its advent she had known at all of those other times. The first thing she saw when she entered the house was a new book on child rearing lying on the table,—a brown book.

“Mother, you shouldn’t have done this,” John was half-provoked. “I would have come out to get you.”

“I am a little tired, I’ll admit, but as long as I’ve got two good . . . well, we used to say limbs . . . but they’re legs now, so I’ll says ‘legs,’ . . . I’m not going to lose the use of them if I can help it.”

She held the baby (to Eloise’s discomfiture, for it said not to do so on page nineteen), turned it to the light . . . said she saw a little of Eloise about its mouth, John in the shape of its head, something of Laura, and even, by some wild stretch of imagination, a look of its great-grandfather Deal around the eyes.