it with the statement that the Jamesons had lost their money. Black
silk of a morning was stupendous to them, when they reflected how
they had, at the utmost, but one black silk, and that guarded as if
it were cloth of gold, worn only upon the grandest occasions, and
designed, as they knew in their secret hearts, though they did not
proclaim it, for their last garment of earth. Grandma Cobb always
wore a fine lace cap also, which should, according to the opinions of
the other old ladies of the village, have been kept sacred for other
women's weddings or her own funeral. She used her best gold-bowed
spectacles every day, and was always leaving them behind her in the
village houses, and little Tommy or Annie had to run after her with
a charge not to lose them, for nobody knew how much they cost.

Grandma Cobb always carried about with her a paper-covered novel and
a box of cream peppermints. She ate the peppermints and freely
bestowed them upon others; the novel she never read. She said quite
openly that she only carried it about to please her daughter, who had
literary tastes. "She belongs to a Shakespeare Club, and a Browning
Club, and a Current Literature Club," said Grandma Cobb.

We concluded that she had, feeling altogether incapable of even
carrying about Shakespeare and Browning, compromised with peppermints
and current literature.

"That book must be current literature," said Mrs. Ketchum one day,
"but I looked into it when she was at our house, and I should not
want Adeline to read it."

After a while people looked upon Grandma Cobb's book with suspicion;
but since she always carried it, thereby keeping it from her