"Darling, were you ill?" she panted, sitting down by her. "Your
grandfather was quite disturbed over it, and I was terribly
frightened. We knew something must have happened. What was it,
lambie? Where do you feel badly?"

Joy looked away from the wall, at her grandmother's kind, anxious,
wrinkled little face under the lace lappets. Grandfather liked
Grandmother to wear caps, so she did it; also fichus and
full-skirted silks, whether such were in fashion or no.

"I didn't feel ill one bit," explained Joy deliberately. "Only I'm
tired of being a decoration. I want to be like other people... I
don't want to wear any more clothes like paintings, or ever have any
more poetry written to me. I--oh, Grandmother, everything's going on
and going on, and none of it's happening to _me!_" She looked at
her grandmother appealingly. "And it feels as if it wouldn't ever!"

But Grandmother didn't seem to understand a bit. And yet she must
have been young once--wasn't there that poem of Grandfather's, "To
Myrtilla at Seventeen," to prove it? The one beginning "Sweetheart,
whose shadowed hair!" Why, he must have--yes, he spoke of it in the
poem--Grandfather must have held Grandmother's hand, like the
Dicky-lover today, and even kissed her because he wanted to, not
because it was nine in the morning or ten at night. Those were the
times he kissed her now. Of one thing Joy was certain, Grandmother
had never told Grandfather he must stop. She wouldn't have dared.

"Dear, would you like a hot-water bottle, and your supper in bed?"
inquired Grandmother, breaking in on these meditations.... Oh, it