Grandma confided a great deal in Marcia and sometimes in her daughter Daisy, whenever Daisy was mad at Aunt Lois. But when her two daughters made up, Grandma knew it was no use talking to either of them for they sided against her. Either Lois scolded or Daisy slyly teased her. Strangers and Marcia were, however, constantly sympathetic. It was mean, they felt, for Aunt Lois to lose her temper whenever Grandma stopped Mr. Sweeney going by. Grandma’s voice talking to Mr. Sweeney was very different than when she talked to anybody else, and Marcia finally discovered that all grown-ups used different voices for different classes of society. The voice Grandma used for Mr. Sweeney was a very elegant one, and furthermore with him she never used the words “me” or “her” in a sentence. “I and my daughter Lois get very lonely here, Mr. Sweeney, especially at nights. It is very hard for she, especially being a widow you might say, and a lovely-looking girl as anybody can tell you. It’s hard for a woman, Mr. Sweeney, when her man is a sick man. Yes sir, my daughter’s husband was taken with an old disease they call walking fever ten years ago and we haven’t seen him since. Very hard for both I and she. You know how a mother feels, Mr. Sweeney. It would be a privilege to me to see some lovely widower like yourself pay her a call now and then.” Mr. Sweeney had a reddish face and was always dressed up with a big black-brimmed hat over his bald head, a cane, and a large thick gold watch fob resting on his tight tan vest. He even carried thick kid gloves sometimes, for his affairs took him into fine places in distant cities. He lived in the London Junction Hotel and rented his former home on Willow Avenue to which he and Grandma referred in sacred tones as “the property.” He had property in Cleveland, too, and in Lesterville where his wife’s parents had been very well fixed.

“A real gentleman,” Grandma told Marcia, “and your Aunt Lois don’t even appreciate what I’m trying to do for her. It’s enough to break a body’s heart.”

“My daughter Lois wondered what your opinion was of the present situation,” Grandma would say, just to keep Mr. Sweeney another few minutes. “She was saying to a party the other day that Mr. Sweeney is about the only person you can talk to in this place, I mean the only person who gets around and knows.”

Mr. Sweeney would stand a little closer to the porch, careful not to disturb the spot where grass was planted but never grew, raise his big hat and mop his head thoughtfully, replace handkerchief in back pocket and cough. “It’s likely we’re in for some more hard times, Mrs. Reed—but, we got some good men in the country, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie—I guess we can trust them to look out for the common people in a pinch.”