“Maybe we’ll get sent to an orphanage,” Marcia said hopefully.

“Florrie, maybe, but we’re too old, I think,” Lena said.

Marcia took a turn at eavesdropping next and was able to report that there was mention of Grandpa Willard coming, and something about his pension coming in handy. This was cheerful news, because there was the fond belief that a visitor in the house would keep Her from nagging at them. The third-floor rooms might be unlocked then, too, and She wouldn’t dare refuse them books or magazines if some relative was around. Things would certainly be different.

The next day Papa dragged out one of the attic mattresses to be aired, indicating that a visitor was expected. Marcia disobeyed the order not to go to Grandma’s except with special permission, and played hooky after morning recess in order to inform her grandma of the happy prospect. It was disconcerting to have Grandma shrug off the news with a patronizing comment that the old man was better off in the Soldiers’ Home. Later, when Grandpa Willard appeared in brand new civilian clothes Marcia heard him inquire benignly of Papa after the “old lady.”

“Is she still alive? Well, well!” he exclaimed, shaking his head in amazement. “Got all her faculties still? Well, I’ll be doggoned. When I saw the old lady ten, twenty years ago, it seemed to me her memory was beginning to fail a little. Well, well, thank goodness I got my memory.”

Old men didn’t like old ladies any more than old ladies liked old men; far from common experiences making them sympathetic, it made them even gleeful over a contemporary’s infirmities, as if life was a seesaw, the other going down made you automatically go up. Marcia resented this contempt her grandparents had for each other’s antiquity, and caught her grandfather in a memory lapse, after his slighting reference to Grandma Reed’s failing. Grandpa gravely considered her accusation.

“No, my memory ain’t going one bit,” he declared. “It’s just that there’s a lot of things I never knew right in the first place, that’s all.”

Grandpa and Papa had a talk on the back steps after supper. Papa said the way he figured was that it was lonesome spending your last days in a Home when you had children ready and willing to board you. Daisy had always wanted him to live with them, but it never worked out that way. But now that they had this big house Papa figured it would tickle Daisy to know Pa was at last staying with them. He could mow the lawn and help around the garden, and take it easy the little time remaining to him. Staying with his folks he got his full pension instead of the Home taking most of it, and he could pay board. Grandpa said money never meant anything to him and he’d just as soon turn the whole pension over to Harry and just keep out enough for tobacco and reading matter, maybe a beer now and then. He didn’t want to be any trouble to anybody, and She might as well know that right away. He’d make his own bed and keep his own room tidy, and get his own meals. Papa said he’d send word to the rest of the family around the state to come see him there, but Grandpa said that would make trouble for Her and not to bother.