'My own grandson there, and the woman down the stair.'

'But you don't really want to go--do you, grannie?'

'I do want to go, Willie. I ought to have been there long ago. I am
very old; so old that I've forgotten how old I am. How old am I?' she
asked, looking up at my uncle.

'Nearly ninety-five, grannie; and the older you get before you go the
better we shall be pleased, as you know very well.'

'There! I told you,' she said with a smile, not all of pleasure, as she
turned her head towards me. 'They won't let me go. I want to go to my
grave, and they won't let me! Is that an age at which to keep a poor
woman from her grave?'

'But it's not a nice place, is it, grannie?' I asked, with the vaguest
ideas of what _the grave_ meant. 'I think somebody told me it was in
the churchyard.'

But neither did I know with any clearness what the church itself meant,
for we were a long way from church, and I had never been there yet.

'Yes, it is in the churchyard, my dear.'

'Is it a house?' I asked.

'Yes, a little house; just big enough for one.'