"'Your pretty ankle's slender grace,
Your skirts when they are thrumming.'
"It was on a Sunday night he began that, drawing it out of the last chords of a hymn. I forget the rest. He reeled it off without a thought. A strip of a man with a solemn face—until you saw his eyes; then you had to laugh, you didn't know why."
"Except grandmother."
"Yes-es. Your grandmother hadn't the comic spirit, Theresa."
She nodded. She was on Olympus when her father talked with her thus, a little above her comprehension, so that she must strain for meanings, while her faith in herself grew great with her stretch.
"I wish grandfather hadn't died," she said. "I don't mind about grandmother. I think she must have been flannelly."
"Flannelly?"
"You know the kind—not pretty underclothes like mother's, but grey things with long sleeves and no trimming."
"Well—yes, yes; I don't know about that. She was very handsome, my dear."
"But not so pretty as Mother or Grace?"