“That’s exactly what I have done! None of my folks know where I have gone. I just wrote a note, telling them not to look for me, and that I was going back to old-fashioned times, if I could find ’em. Then I got this bag out of the cupboard–I’d kept it all these years–packed it with my very oldest duds, and–well, here I am!” and the old lady’s laugh rang out as shrill and clear as a blackbird’s call.
“I have astonished you; have I?” she pursued. “And I suppose I have astonished my folks. But they know I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I ought to be. Why, I’m a grandmother three times!”
“‘Three times?’” repeated the amazed ’Phemie.
“Yes, Miss Euphemia Bray. Three grandchildren–two girls and a boy. And they are always telling folks how up-to-date grandma is! I’m sick of being up-to-date. I’m sick of dressing so that folks behind me on the street can’t tell whether I’m a grandmother or my own youngest grandchild!
“We just live in a perfect whirl of excitement. ‘Pleasure,’ they call it. But it’s gotten to be a nuisance. My daughter-in-law has her head full of society matters and club work. The girls and Tom spend all but the little time they are obliged to give to books in the private schools they attend, in dancing and theatre parties, and the like.
“And here a week ago I found my son–their father–a man forty-five years old, and bald, and getting fat, being taught the tango by a French dancing professor in the back drawing-room!” exclaimed Mrs. Castle, in a tone of disgust that almost convulsed ’Phemie.
“That was enough. That was the last straw on the camel’s back. I made up my mind when I read your sister’s advertisement that I would like to live simply and with simple people again. I’d like really to feel like a grandmother, and dress like one, and be one.
“And if I like it up here at your place I shall stay through the summer. No hunting-lodge in the Adirondacks for me this spring, or Newport, or the Pier later, or anything of that kind. I’m going to sit on your porch and knit socks. My mother did when she was a grandmother. This is her shawl, and mother and father took this old carpet-bag with them when they went on their honeymoon.
“Mother enjoyed her old age. She spent it quietly, and it was lovely,” declared Mrs. Castle, with a note in her voice that made ’Phemie sober at once. “I am going to have quiet, and repose, and a simple life, too, before I have to die.
“It’s just killing me keeping up with the times. I don’t want to keep up with ’em. I want them to drift by me, and leave me stranded in some pleasant, sunny place, where I only have to look on. And that’s what I am going to get at Hillcrest–just that kind of a place–if you’ve got it to sell,” completed this strange old lady, with emphasis.