"Why, where's mother going, Mis' Gray?" asked Rosa with wide-open and
frightened eyes.

"There, there, Sary, don't talk to the child so! Never mind, Rosa dear,
Sary don't mean it. Sary's a good woman, yes, a very good woman."

"I do too mean it, father, and I jest want you to keep still. You always
take her part. Yes, I am a good woman, or I'd never kep' you after poor
Tom got killed. I have to sew my finger ends off to git us enough to eat
and to pay the rent. I always did have bad luck from the day I married
Tom Gray. He would insist on keepin' you, and you wuz sick that summer
he couldn't git no work. He'd walk all day a-tryin' to find somethin' to
do, then set up all night with you, though I told him it wuzn't
necessary. I washed and I sewed and I done everything, but our little
home had to go. I thought then, and I think now, that we could a-kep'
it, if it hadn't been fer you. If Tom could git hold of a cent at all,
it would go fer medicine, or somethin' fer you to eat. After you got
well, he found a place to work, and wuz a-tryin' to git back the home,
when he went and got killed, a-tryin' to keep a poor, good-fer-nothin'
beggar from bein' run over by the streetcar. All he left me wuz you to
look after, and you ain't never had a bit of sense, since the day he
wuz brought home to me all torn and bleedin'. There ain't many that's
had as much to put up with as I have. I guess most daughters-in-law
would jest have told you to leave, but no, I've been a-keepin' you fer
the last five years, and no tellin' how much longer you'll live! And you
didn't mind me this mornin', and I sprained my ankle a-goin'--"

"Grandpa," broke in Rosa, heedless of Mrs. Gray's irascible tongue,
"what does she mean about mother going away?"