“Why, Grandma, how can you think it? You’re Will’s own mother. Of course I’ll take care of you.”

Grandma Deal pulled away and looked around her. “Whatever did you set out them cottonwoods for? I can’t bear that white fuzz blowin’ around. What did you face the house south for?” A thousand wrinkles in her little thin, brown face, a thousand worries under the old, rusty, black bonnet.

One arm around the bent, wiry figure, the black valise in the other hand, Abbie piloted the arrival into the sitting-room, where Grace was crying silently for fear of the queer little old woman.

“Why, Grace, this is your own Grandma,—Father’s mother, and she’s come to live with us. We’ll give you our bedroom, Grandma, and Grace and I’ll go upstairs to sleep.”

“What you goin’ to put me in a bedroom on the east side for? Sun’s hot there in summer and east winds blow on it in the winter.”

“Well, you try it a while, Grandma, and we’ll change the bed if you’re not comfortable. Now, you rest and I’ll go out and get supper.” Oh, where would she get the strength to be patient with Grandma?

Out in the kitchen, she stepped to the side porch and looked up at the sky beyond the Lombardy poplars. How could she do any more than she was doing now? Where did a person get help for all the trials of life? Why must she always be doing something for some one else? Why had Will been taken away? How could she assume this added burden without him?

Whether it was of the spirit world, a touch of the supernatural, the wind in the Lombardys, or only a memory,—she did not know. But quite distinctly she heard it:

I would go on with you . . . remembering. . . .

CHAPTER XXIII

Grandma Deal lived with Abbie for two years, the last thirteen months of which she was bedridden, and during which she was consistent in only one thing,—regularly spending a portion of each day in wishing she had not come. Abbie washed for her and ironed for her and cooked as well as she could with a frugal larder, to satisfy her childish cravings. Sometimes she picked up the frail little body and carried her to a couch near the window. And in the two years, she did not leave Grandma with any one else a half-dozen times. Margaret and Mack and John all scolded about it. “It seems as though Mother always has some big extra job on her hands,” they would tell each other. Regina, fat and easy-going, came out once to help with the care, but the arrangement was not a particularly happy one, inasmuch as Abbie had two to wait on then, rather than one.

Strangely enough, of the whole family, Grandma took the greatest liking to the one who did the least for her,—Isabelle. Dreamy-eyed, thinking of nothing but music, Isabelle seldom did anything for Grandma but sing for her. Home from the academy that summer, the girl was expressing her desire constantly for a piano instead of the old reed organ.