"I suppose it will be in the children's children," she resumed, her eyes going out like a candle. "For I married old Ellis, though to this day I never quite believe it. And one thing I do know. I won't die in the dying room of his house. I won't do it, not if it was the custom of a hundred families. Not if he was here himself to see me do it. I wouldn't. Though he was kindness itself. But not if he was here himself, and had the satisfaction of seeing me do it. A dreadful room! I'd be frightened to death to die in it. I like me sheets sun-kissed, heat or no heat, and no sun ever gets into that room. But it's better for a woman to marry, even if she marries the wrong man. I allus said so. An old maid, especially a decayed gentlewoman, is a blight on the face of the earth."
"Why?" said Jack suddenly. The old woman was too authoritative.
"That's why! What do you know about it," she said contemptuously.
"I knew a nice old lady in England, who'd never been married," he said, thinking of a really beautiful, gentle woman, Who had kept all her perfume and her charm, in spite of her fifty-odd years of single blessedness. But then she had a naturally deep and religious nature, not like this pagan old cat of a Gran.
"Did you!" said Gran, eying him severely. "What do you know at your age? I've got three unmarried daughters, and I'm ashamed of them. If I'd married your grandfather I never should have had them. Self-centred, and old as old boots, they are. I'd rather they'd gone wrong and died in the bush, like your Aunt who had a child by Mary's father."
Jack made round, English eyes of amazement at this speech. He disapproved thoroughly.
"You've got too much of your English father in you," she said, "and not enough of your hard-hearted grandfather. Look at Lennie, what a beautiful boy he is."
There was a pause. Jack sat in a torment while she baited him. He was full of antagonism towards her and her years.
"But I tell you, you never realise you're old till you see your friends slipping away. One by one they go—over the border. That's what makes you feel old. I tell you. Nothing else. Annie Brockman died the other day. I was at school with her. She wasn't old, though you'd have thought so."
The way Gran said this was quite spiteful. And Jack thought to himself: "What nonsense, she was old if she was at school with Gran. If she was as old as Gran, she was awfully old."