Her grandson watched her with amused admiration and affection. He had seen the countries of Europe during the last World War, he had seen New York and Hollywood and San Francisco and Honolulu and many strange and exotic places, his world was the globe and the constellations among which he swooped and darted, he would choose never to live anywhere but in this glittering magnetic ice palace in which he had been born. Her world never had been anything other than it now was as she sat rolling the strands of animal sinew as her own grandmother and great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother had rolled them thus before her. She was justifying her existence, she was proving that she was useful still in a world of the swift and the young and the careless. This amiable and industrious little mummy could hold up her head in the presence of the great-grandchildren shouting and laughing in play outside the shanty, no matter how cleverly they read picture books and did finger-painting at school and ate lollipops and ice-cream cones and lettuce and hamburgers instead of muktuk and the leaves of wild green plants, and Eskimo ice cream made of grated reindeer tallow and seal oil beaten and beaten until the mass was white and fluffy, and, mixed with blueberries or low-bush cranberries, so delicious, to her way of thinking.

Ross Guildenstern leaned over the unsavory old woman and touched her cheek with his strong brown hand that bore the Air Force ring, and he murmured something to her in her own mysterious language. The withered mask lighted then with a little flickering flame of brilliance so that for one moment between the young vital man with the vivid merry face and the indomitable old blind woman a curious resemblance sprang into being.

“Oh, Ross!” Chris said, inadequately as they called their good-byes to the children and walked down the road.

“She’s all right,” Ross said, rather abruptly for him.

“What’s that she said when we left?” Bridie asked.

“I was going to tell you that. She said the one who helped her off the can had hands of goodness and that they were work hands, too.”

“Now who’s being sentimental?” Christine demanded. “It’s dark in there, and stuffy, and it can’t be healthy. Shouldn’t she be in a comfortable place, and not working? And having things done for her? She’s so old and feeble.”

“Grandma isn’t really that old and she’s as tough as that thread she’s making. She’s doing what she wants to do, she’s earning her way, she loves it. To her it is a dream life. If you took it away from her she would die.”

Caution told Bridie that there now had been enough of Ross Guildenstern’s worthy family. “Now what? I’m beginning to be hungry, would you believe it, and not yet twelve! Your Grandpa’ll be looking for us, Chris.”

“No he won’t,” Chris said, calmly, “and besides, how lost can you be in Oogruk?”

“I like to know where I’m going,” Bridie snapped, “before I go.”