the first thing I knew grandmother was sending me over there on some
errand, telling me there was no special hurry about coming back. My
father might set his foot down upon some plan of mine ever so firmly,
but grandmother had only to smile at him and he was reduced to a
degree of limpness that contributed to my escape. I have often
wondered whether that smile on the face of grandmother did not remind
him, of some of his own boyish pranks.

We boys knew, somehow, what she expected of us, and her expectation
was the measuring rod with which we tested our conduct. Boy-like, we
often wandered away into a far country, but when we returned, she had
the fatted calf ready for us, with never a question as to our travels
abroad. In that way foreign travel lost something of its glamour,
and the home life made a stronger appeal. She made her own bill of
fare so appetizing that we lost all our relish for husks and the
table companions connected with them. She never asked how or where
we acquired the cherry-stains on our shirts, but we knew that she
recognized cherry-stains when she saw them. The next day our shirts
were innocent of foreign cherry-stains, and we experienced a feeling
of righteousness. She made us feel that we were equal partners with
her in the enterprise of life, and that hoeing the garden and eating
the cookies were our part of the compact.

When we went to stay with her for a week or two we carried with us a
book or so of the lurid sort, but returned home leaving them behind,
generally in the form of ashes. She found the book, of course,
beneath the pillow, and replaced it when she made the bed, but never
mentioned the matter to us. Then, in the afternoon, while we munched
cookies she would read to us from some book that made our own book
seem tame and unprofitable. She never completed the story, however,