"An inch in a man's nose is considerable."
Grandmother surveyed him severely over the top of her bi-focal glasses.
"Speaking of noses," she said, "you be careful how you try pulling Elizabeth's nose or chuck her under the chin, or any such actions. Growing girls is particular about such things."
"And I'm particular who I chuck under the chin. I'm afraid you are going to ruin your eyes with those glasses, Mother, you have to strain so hard to look over the top when you want to see anything at a distance, and work so hard trying to look under 'em when you want to see anything nigh to."
He chuckled at Grandmother's sudden effort to concentrate her keen brown eyes within the space of the glass half-moon through which she was supposed to focus her knitting.
"I just wanted to bind off the sleeve before the light faded," she said.
"When Congress repeals this here light-saving scheme, it'll hurt your feelings two ways, won't it, Mother? You won't have the satisfaction of expressing your mind at the Administration for setting the clock back, and you won't have a extry hour of light to strain your eyes in."
The old lady—she was seventy-five, but in a strong light when she was not quite becomingly dressed, which was not often, she looked sixty—drew her rocking chair closer to the small window, and knitted in silence. All the windows in that remarkable old house were small, and divided into little, square panes. Grandfather drew his rocking chair closer to his window, and made a great pretence of reading, but he did not turn or rattle his paper.
"You trying to prove that your eyes is just as good as mine? Well, I don't know as I blame you, Father, but your glasses is out in the barn on the feed box. If you could read a line without 'em, I'd know the contents of the whole paper by this time."
Grandfather Swift grinned, and unbuttoned a lower button on the immaculate linen waistcoat he had put on in his granddaughter's honour—he wore no coat.