Grandma Watterby considered gravely.
“Saunders? Saunders?” she repeated reflectively, while Betty squeezed Bob’s arm in an agony of hopeful excitement. “Seems to me—now wait a minute, and don’t hurry me. When you hurry me, I get mixed in my mind.”
Betty and Bob waited in respectful silence. The old woman rubbed her forehead fretfully, but gradually her expression cleared.
“There was a Saunders family,” she murmured, half to herself. “Three girls, wasn’t there—or was it four? No, three, and only one of ’em married. What was her name—Faith? Yes, that’s it, Faith. A pretty girl she was, with eyes as blue as a lake and ripply hair she wore in a big knot. I always did want to see that hair down her back, and one day I told her so.
“‘How long is it, Faith?’ I asked her. ‘When I was a girl we wore our hair down our backs in a braid and was thankful to our Creator for the blessing of a heavy head of hair.’
“Faith laughed and laughed. I can see her now; she had a funny way of crinkling up her eyes when she laughed.
“‘I’ll take it down for you, Mrs. Watterby,’ she says; and, my land, if she didn’t pull out every pin and let her hair tumble down her back. It was a foot below her waist, too. I never saw such a head o’ hair.”
Bob looked up at the old woman with shining eyes.
“That was my mother,” he said quietly.
“Your mother!” Grandma Watterby’s tone was startled. Then her face broke into a wrinkled smile.