The thin voice was so devilishly awake, in the darkness of the night, like a voice out of the past piercing the inert present.
"What did he care! What did he care! Not a bit," Gran went on. "And y're another. You take after him. You're such another. You're a throw-back, to your mother's father. I was wondering what I was going to do with those great galoots in my room all night. I'm glad it's you."
Jack thought: "Lord, have I got to sit here all night!"
"You've got the night before you," said Gran's demonishly wakeful voice, uncanny in its thin alertness, in the deep night. "So come round here to the fireside an' make y'self comfortable."
Jack rose obediently and went round the screen. After all, an arm-chair would be welcome.
"Well, say something," said Gran.
The boy peered at her in the dusk, in a kind of fear.
"Then light me a candle, for the land's sake," she said pettishly.
He took a tin candle-stick with a tallow candle, blew the fire and made a yellow light. She looked like a carved ivory Chinese figure, almost grotesque, among her pillows.
"Yes, y'r like y'r grandfather: a stocky, stubborn man as didn't say much, but dare do anything. And never had a son.—Hard as nails the man was."