Grandmother



Do you remember the day she lost her glasses? My, such a commotion!
Everybody turned in to hunt for them. Grandmother tramped from one end
of the house to the other - we all searched - upstairs and down - with
no success.

They weren't in the big Bible (we turned the leaves carefully many times -
it was the most likely place). They weren't in either of her sewing
baskets, nor in the cook-book in the kitchen. Grandfather said she could
use one pair of his gold-bowed ones - but shucks! She couldn't see with
anything except those old steel-bowed specs! . . .

And then, when she finally sat down and said for the fiftieth time: "I
wonder where those specs are!" . . . and put the corner of her apron to
her eyes - I happened to look up, and there they were - on the top of
her head! Been there all the time . . . And she enjoyed the joke as much
as we did - a joke that went around the little town and followed her
through all the years within my memory of her.

Sometimes (as often as expedient), you asked her for a penny - never
more, and then:

"Now, Willie, what do you want with a penny? I haven't got it. Run along
now."