"She is quite deaf and walks about with a cane, but I think she's pretty well." Helen did not say she was cross and crabbed and a trial to her grand-daughter's family. It really was sad to live past the time when people wanted you. But couldn't you be sweet and comforting? Must old age be queer and disagreeable?
"I shall try to live to a hundred," said Mrs. Van Dorn. "Let me see—I wish you'd read something bright, about people having good times. Why do writers put so much sorrow in stories? It is bad enough to have it in the world."
Helen ran up and brought down a pile of novels that Mr. Disbrowe had selected in the city. But one did not suit and another did not suit.
"We will look at the sun going down. What wonderful sunsets I have seen!"
"Tell me about them," entreated Helen.
"There was one at the Golden Gate, California. No one ever could paint anything like it." Mrs. Van Dorn looked across the sky as if she saw it again. She was an excellent hand at description. Then the men were coming in, the dinner bell rang.
"I won't bother to dress, I'll play invalid."
Helen pushed the chair in a sheltered place, and laid the shawl over the back of a hall chair. Everybody congratulated Mrs. Van Dorn, and she said with a little laugh that she thought it was the weather, and she had been playing off, that she hadn't been really ill.
"I think we all gave in to the weather," said Mrs. Lessing. "I had a touch of rheumatism. You can have a fire in wet cool weather, but when it is wet hot weather, you can hardly get your breath and feel smothered."
"It's been a dreadful week for trade," remarked Mr. Disbrowe. "I haven't made my salt. Perhaps it would have been better to have tried pepper."