The young woman was very much in earnest in seeing that her mother
had a comfortable seat, that she had not the discomfort of the hot
sun, that the children made way for her so that she could move into
her seat comfortably. All her words were thoughtful and courteous,
but the spirit and the tone of her words were quite the reverse of
courteous. If some listener with his eyes shut had heard the tone
without understanding the words he might easily have thought that
the woman was talking to a little dog.

Poor "Mother" trotted into her seat with the air of a little dog who
was so well trained that he did at once what his mistress ordered.
It was very evident that "Mother's" will had been squeezed out of
her and trampled upon for years by her dutiful daughter, who looked
out always that "Mother" had the best, without the first scrap of
respect for "Mother's" free, human soul.

The grandchildren took the spirit of their mother's words rather
than the words themselves, and treated their grandmother as if she
were a sort of traveling idiot tagged on to them, to whom they had
to be decently respectful whenever their mother's eye was upon them,
and whom they ignored entirely when their mother looked the other
way,

It so happened that I was sitting next to this particular mother who
had been poked into a comfortable seat by her careful daughter. And,
after a number of other suggestions had been poked at her with a
view to adding to her comfort, she turned to me and in a quaint,
confidential way, with the gentle voice of a habitual martyr, and at
the same time a twinkle of humor in her eye, she said "They think,
you know, I don't know anything."