"That corn-colored crape is just the thing for me," Patty cried. "Isn't it lovely! Oh, you vain old grandmother! you are as gray as a sparrow now, but you used to go arrayed in purple and fine linen."
"I was not weaned from the worldliness of fine dress then," the old lady said, smiling. "And they did say," she added, smoothing her dove-gray dress with innocent complacency, "that I was not uncomely in those days."
"You are the handsomest mother in the State now," said Dr. Sanford, who had entered. "Patty, what is that bundle of papers?"
A packet of papers yellowed by age lay in the bottom of the trunk, and Patty took them up.
"Some of the letters grandmother had in her philandering days, I suppose. Shall I open them, grandmother?"
"Give them to me. Thee art a sad, giddy girl, grand-daughter.—They are old papers of thy father's, Charles. I haven't seen them this forty years for aught I know."
"Let me see them, mother," Dr. Sanford said. "This is father's land-grant for serving in the war of 1812."
"I never knew grandfather was in the war of 1812," said Patty. "Was he wounded?"
"Wounded," repeated grandmother Sanford, laughing. "There came a report that the British were coming to Quinnebasset where he lived, and a company of men was raised. They went down to Edgecomb, and had a camp for four or five weeks, and then came home again."
"'The king of France, with forty thousand men,
Marched up a hill, and then marched down again,'"