“I’ve got more grandchildren than children now,” said Mrs Orgreave to Edwin, “and I never thought to have!”
“Have you really?” Edwin responded. “Let me see—”
“I’ve got nine.”
“Ten, mother,” Janet corrected. “She’s forgetting her own grandchildren now!”
“Bless me!” exclaimed Mrs Orgreave, taking off her eyeglasses and wiping them, “I’d missed Tom’s youngest.”
“You’d better not tell Emily that,” said Janet. (Emily was the mother of Tom’s children.) “Here, give me those eyeglasses, dear. You’ll never get them right with a linen handkerchief. Where’s your bit of chamois?”
Mrs Orgreave absently and in somewhat stiff silence handed over the pince-nez! She was now quite an old woman, small, shapeless, and delightfully easy-going, whose sense of humour had not developed with age. She could never see a joke which turned upon her relations with her grandchildren, and in fact the jocular members of the family had almost ceased to employ this subject of humour. She was undoubtedly rather foolish about her grandchildren—‘fond,’ as they say down there. The parents of the grandchildren did not object to this foolishness—that is, they only pretended to object. The task of preventing a pardonable weakness from degenerating into a tedious and mischievous mania fell solely upon Janet. Janet was ready to admit that the health of the grandchildren was a matter which could fairly be left to their fathers and mothers, and she stood passive when Mrs Orgreave’s grandmotherly indulgences seemed inimical to their health; but Mrs Orgreave was apt to endanger her own health in her devotion to the profession of grandmother—for example by sitting up to unchristian hours with a needle. Then there would be a struggle of wills, in which of course Mrs Orgreave, being the weaker, was defeated; though her belief survived that she and she alone, by watchfulness, advice, sagacity, and energy, kept her children’s children out of the grave. On all other questions the harmony between Janet and her mother was complete, and Mrs Orgreave undoubtedly considered that no mother had ever had a daughter who combined so many virtues and charms.
Two.
Mr Orgreave, forgetful of the company, was deciphering the “British Medical Journal” in the twilight of the afternoon. His doctor had lent him this esoteric periodical because there was an article therein on influenza, and Mr Orgreave was very much interested in influenza.