The homes of the younger children had nothing better to offer, for they, too, had growing families, and in even smaller houses. It was true that she and Kirkby would have their own home before so long, but she could not think of it now with her early happy passion. It seemed vulnerable to her now, and no longer a haven of contentment. For the first time in her life she saw the good stone walls of her English cottage as a frame for privacy and peace.
“Jessie says Canadian children aren’t children as we know ’em,” Dolly was saying blandly. “She says they grow up that fast it’s hard to remember they’ve ever even been babies. They’re grown folks, she says, before you can hardly turn round, same as that fine lad of Luke’s you said could manage a motor. I reckon you’ll be surprised, Mrs. Kirkby, by the time you get there, to find how they’ve all come on.”
Mattie turned to the door with the same sharp movement with which she had endeavoured to rid herself of Jessie in the kitchen. That last stroke of hers, dealt through Dolly’s innocent tongue, had gone a great deal nearer home than she cared to realise. Like most grandmothers, she had thought of the children as children only, hardly believing that in the future they would be grown-up people. And especially she had thought of little Eric as remaining always little Eric.... Yet already, as she remembered, a year had passed since they had sent her his last picture. By the time she got out to him, she reflected grimly, he, too, might have risen to the dignity of the motor-mower!
“Time we were having tea,” she said firmly, waving Dolly before her through the door. “You’ll be wanting it, I’m sure. As for me, I’m that worn out with all that shoving and siding, I could do with a dozen teas instead of one!”
Back in the kitchen, however, she was diverted by still another matter, which kept the tea waiting a little longer. Going to a cupboard in the wall, she opened the door and stood looking at its contents.
“I can’t make up my mind what to do about my jam,” she said, as Dolly joined her. “It fair goes to my heart to leave it. Yet it seems silly, doesn’t it, to go hugging jam-pots and such-like across the ocean? I doubt it’ll have to be put in the sale.”
“Folks’ll be fighting like cats for it, if it is!” Dolly laughed, peering admiringly round her shoulder. Even at this time of the year the shelves were still half-filled with rows of glistening jars, making, with their white caps topping their coloured bodies, a smart and polished regiment. “It’s a long while back since I first heard tell there was nothing to beat your jam.”
Mattie looked pleased, and her voice lost the rather dull tone which had suddenly come into it since her late depression in the parlour.
“Well, I’ve always prided myself on getting it just so,” she said, eyeing the glories of the cupboard proudly. “It’s been my hobby, as you might say. Getting the best of everything, that’s the secret,—the best fruit and the best sugar, and making sure of the boiling. Not but what like enough there’s a knack to it as well, same as there is for making butter and setting hens.”
She ran her hand fondly over the white paper carpet above which the jams glowed like so many jewels, the raspberries looking like pressed garnets against the prison of their glass, and the red currant and apple jellies gleaming like ruby and yellow topaz.