But shortens thy journey, and hastens thee home.'"
"O don't, please, grannie," I said. "I don't want you to think of that."
"I'm always thinking of it," she said. "That's my only home now, Phœbe. I've no home again in this world. You young things can take to fresh places easy enough, and it's only right. But I can't. I'm like an old tree pulled up by the roots. It'll never take kindly to another soil. I think uprooting means dying in such a case. Not that I'm murmuring, my dear. One must have trouble. And if it wasn't for the change in Miles, I could stand other things easier."
"You aren't so very old, grannie," I said. "I wish you wouldn't talk about dying, please. You work ever so much harder than mother does. And we'll all be together, and I'll be such a good girl, and I think we shall be happy. Don't you think so? Won't you try, grannie?" And I know I looked at her in a beseeching sort of way.
"O yes, I'll try," said she. "I don't doubt but what I'll be happy. I couldn't be aught else, with the thought of God loving and caring for me. But it won't be home, Phœbe, my dear."
And I knew she spoke truth, though I tried not to think it.
[CHAPTER XI.]
GOING HOME.
THE evening came which was to have been our last in the old home, for the very next day we were to have left it—just one week before Christmas Day.
It was bitterly cold weather, and grannie seemed to shrink under the cold, as she had not been used to do. The other house was all furnished and ready, except just the room for grannie and me, and that was to have its furniture taken from the cottage on the morrow. Everything left behind would be sold.