"Thank you for the milk, Grandmother, but I don't care for the cookie. I never eat between meals."
"Your grandfather and I had a little spell o' argument about that cookie. He claimed you wouldn't be used to eating sugar-molasses cookies, but I thought you might of inherited your father's taste for them."
"I have inherited a great many of Father's tastes."
"Your brother Johnny, he used to like 'em, too, when he was a little feller. He was a real good little boy, Johnny was. He spent every summer of his life with me and Grandpa till he began to go to that college."
"We don't called him Johnny. We called him Junior when he was growing up, and I called him Buddy, but now we call him John—or John Junior when we wish to distinguish him from Father."
"Well, your grandfather and I always called him Johnny. It seemed to suit him. I hope he'll get well enough to get down to Gran'ma's before the summer is over. Gran'ma could help him to get well."
"He is quite sick now, and unable to see any one at all. He is very devoted to me, but he is in such a weakened condition that even I wasn't allowed to see him. He won the D. S. C.—the Distinguished Service Cross, you know."
"I don't know so much about this new-fangled soldiering. I lost two brothers in the Civil War—your great uncles they would have been. Only eighteen and twenty, but grown men they seemed to be in them days. Your father favoured my brother William more'n he did anybody on his father's side o' the house. Johnny, he looked like Sam when he was a little feller. Well, I'm real glad Johnny got home safe."
"Of course, we can't be sure that he is safe yet, but the recent reports have been very encouraging."
"Your father's proud of his boy, I guess. It was a great thing for him to have a grown boy to go. The next best thing to going himself."