The apartment had a big square front room with pine woodwork and a light wallpaper mottled with an intricate design of bilious morning glories. Shelves had been built along one side for their wares, and a counter placed beneath them. A wax head decorated the counter, wearing a blond transformation made apparently of rope rather than hair. A Perfecto Cigar Box served as cash register. A dark closet opening from the front room turned out to be the kitchen, from which issued the smell of escaping gas and burnt sugar. Another door led to two small cubicles which were called bedrooms, and were also used for fitting of corsets. Mr. Brady, owner of the Fair Store, allowed the ladies his Irregulars. Grandma felt that most women’s figures were irregular anyway, so they might as well save money by buying irregular corsets. It only took a jiffy to cut off the garters from the bust section and sew them on the right end.

The arrival of Grandma in London Junction had a devastating effect on the Willard girls. A person goes through life accepting his lot with equanimity, till a moment of complete happiness reveals to him that he has up to now had a perfectly wretched existence. Marcia and Lena and Florrie had reluctantly adjusted themselves to their stepmother’s rule, working out their own routine for dodging her displeasure. Suddenly Grandma was in town, and the flash of hope this brought made them see their life in the Furness home as unendurable torture. The possibility of escape to Grandma’s and a revival of the easygoing days on Hodge Street made them look with mutinous indignation on their lot. Why must they be made to feel guilty of some crime? Why must they wake each morning with leaden hearts, tiptoe glumly downstairs to breakfast, waiting for the almost certain morning greeting from Her, “Don’t dig your heels into my new waxed floors! Don’t put your filthy hands on my clean tablecloth! Stop coughing; your cold’s all gone!” If Minelda had a rash or stomachache or sore throat, it was ascribed to Marcia who had in her wickedness let Minelda eat a banana, walk on the grass, or throw her bonnet on the sidewalk.

“I’ll tell Grandma,” Lena and Marcia whispered to each other in the dark. But how could they when She wouldn’t let them visit her? And how could they when it might bring criticism on Papa? They sat upstairs in the dark, forbidden to read because lights cost money, forbidden to sing, forbidden to play games because it might shake the floor, forbidden to go out because they’d track mud back indoors. If Lena boldly ventured downstairs to ask Papa’s permission to sit in the kitchen or to unlock Florrie’s big doll from the closet, Papa flew into a temper.

“What’s the matter bothering me with fool questions like that?” So She always won out, smiling crookedly down at her mending as Lena had to retreat back upstairs.

“Our own Grandma in town and She won’t let us see her,” Marcia and Lena muttered angrily. Grandma in town gave Marcia confidence to creep downstairs and sneak Parlor Recitations for Young People out of the bookcase without asking permission. Caught red-handed just as she was learning “My Mother Calls Me William,” she was jerked by her arm into the kitchen, and her own silver-tasseled whip was administered smartly. Stonily impassive during this punishment, Marcia looked contemptuously at the former Miss Hawkins, who sank back flushed and trembling into a chair.