GRANDMA ARRIVES
Grandma had come to spend the winter, and Bobby and Alice and Pink were watching her fix up her room. It was the guest room, and the children had always thought it a beautiful room, with its soft blue rug, wicker chairs, and pretty cretonne draperies. But Grandma had had all the furniture taken out, and the rug, carefully rolled up and wrapped in thick paper to keep the moths out, had been carried to the attic.
Then Grandma—but Mother called Bobby and Alice and Pink to come and get their wraps and go out to play a while.
Grandma, seeing them edge reluctantly toward the head of the stairs, said cheerfully, as she bustled about unpacking the great box that held her “things,” “Never mind, dears. Run out and play now, and tonight we’ll have a regular housewarming. Come to my room at seven o’clock and we will have a little party.”
Just as the clock in the hall downstairs struck the first stroke of seven, Alice rapped loudly on Grandma’s door.
Grandma opened the door immediately and the children stepped in—then stared in astonishment. They had never seen a room like this before. In place of the blue rug was a gayly colored rag carpet. The bed, to which had been added a feather tick, was twice as high as any they had ever seen. It was covered with a handmade coverlet of blue and white. Patchwork cushions were on the chairs, and crocheted covers on bureau and chiffonier. The windows were filled with blooming geraniums, and in one window hung a canary in a gilt cage. On a round braided rug before the fire lay a gray cat, asleep. By a low rocker stood a little table that held a work basket running over with bright-colored patches, bits of lace, balls of scarlet yarn, knitting needles, pieces of velvet, silk, and wool. On the chiffonier stood a basket filled with big, red apples, polished till they shone, and beside the apples was a plate covered with a napkin.
“Well, well,” said Grandma, “here you are, every one of you! Just on time, too. Come right in and see my house and meet my family. This is Betsy.” She touched the cat gently and Betsy lifted her head and started to purr. “I raised her from a kitten and brought her here in a basket all the way on the train. One conductor wouldn’t let me keep her in the coach with me, so I went out and rode in the baggage car with Betsy.”
“Did you bring the bird, too?” asked Pink, smoothing Betsy’s fur.
“No, I just got the bird a little while ago. He hasn’t even a name yet. I thought maybe I’d call him Dicky. That’s a nice name for a bird, don’t you think so? My baby sent me the bird and the flowers, too. Aren’t they lovely?”
“Have you a baby, Grandma?” asked Alice, looking around the room wonderingly.
“Yes, I have a baby, but he isn’t little any more. Still he is my baby all the same, the youngest of my ten children. Wasn’t it thoughtful of him to send me the bird and the flowers?”
Alice and Bobby and Pink looked at one another. They knew their daddy had sent the flowers, for they had heard Grandma thank him for them. The idea of their big, broad-shouldered daddy being anyone’s baby seemed funny to them, and they giggled.
“Say, Grandma, he’s some baby, all right,” Bobby remarked.
“You can’t rock him to sleep the way I do my baby,” observed Pink.
“Not now, but I used to,” said Grandma. Then she brought three stools from the corner—low, round stools covered with carpet. “You children sit on these stools and I’ll sit in this chair and we’ll spend the evening getting acquainted. You must tell me all about yourselves.”
The children told Grandma about their school and their playmates, their dog and their playhouse, about how they went camping in summer time and what they did on Christmas and Easter, and about the flying machine that flew over the town on the Fourth of July, and about the Sunday school picnic. When they finally stopped, breathless, Grandma looked so impressed that Bobby said pityingly, “You didn’t have so many things to do when you were little, did you, Grandma?”
“Well, now, I don’t know about that,” Grandma answered slowly. “We didn’t have the same things to do, but we had good times, too.”
“Tell us about them,” Alice begged.
“When I was a little girl,” Grandma began, “I lived in the country on a large farm. All around our house were fields and woods. You might think I would have been lonely, but I never was. You see, I had always lived there. Then I had six older brothers and sisters, and one brother, Charlie, was just two years older than I was. And there were so many things to do! The horses to ride to water and the cows to bring from the pasture field. On cool mornings Charlie and I would stand on the spots where the cows had lain all night, to get our feet warm before starting back home. I had a pet lamb that followed me wherever I went, and we had a dog—old Duke. He helped us get the cows and kept the chickens out of the yard and barked when a stranger came in sight. And when the dinner bell by the kitchen door rang, how he did howl!
“And the cats! You never saw such cats, they were so fat and round and sleek. No wonder, for they had milk twice a day out of a hollow rock that stood by the barnyard gate.
“And birds were everywhere. Near the well, high in the air, fastened to a long pole, was a bird house. Truman and Joe had made it, and it was just like a little house, with tiny windows and doors and a wee bit of a porch where the birds would sit to sun themselves.
“Then there were the chickens to look after, often a hundred baby chicks to feed and put in their coops at night. And in the spring what fun we had hunting turkey hens’ nests! In February we tapped the sugar trees and boiled down the sap into maple sugar and sirup. We had Easter egg hunts and school Christmas treats, and in the fall we gathered in the nuts for winter—chestnuts, hickory nuts, walnuts.”
Grandma paused a moment and glanced at the clock on the mantel.
“Dear me,” she exclaimed in surprise, “see what time it is! We must have our refreshments right away. Bobby, will you pass the apples? And, Alice, under the napkin are some ginger cookies that I brought with me. You may pass them, please, and Pink and I will be the company.
“These apples,” went on Grandma, helping herself to one, “are out of my orchard. I sent two barrels of them to your daddy, and every night before we go to bed we will each eat one. ‘An apple a day,’ you know, ‘keeps the doctor away.’”
When they had finished and were saying good night, Bobby said, “Lots of things did happen when you were a little girl, Grandma. I wish you’d tell us more.”
“Not tonight,” said Grandma, “It’s bedtime now, but come back some other night. If you still want me to tell you more about when I was a little girl, tap on my door three times, like this, but if you only come to call, tap once, like this.”
Next time we’ll see how often they tapped on Grandma’s door. Can you guess?