For particular answer, Ben threw his arms around her neck. “It’s going to be real easy for me to love you,” he said happily. Then he drew back and looked at her, seriously, before he announced: “I think I shall call you Grandmother Gray.”
“That is a very good name, my boy,” she said, smiling through the joyful tears that had sprung into her eyes at the feeling of his loving young arms around her neck; and her glasses fell off her nose like any grandmother’s.
“Is Elsa our cousin now?” asked Ben, who was always of an inquiring turn of mind.
“No, my dear,” replied his grandmother, brushing back his hair with her richly jewelled hand; “and I will tell you why. After your own grandfather died and after your mother went away, I married a widower, Judge Danforth, who had two sons. One of those sons was Elsa’s father and the other is her Uncle Ned, whom you know. After Judge Danforth died, and Elsa’s father also, I moved to Berkeley, because I knew that your mother was here, and I could not live any longer without seeing her and my grandchildren. Elsa is no real relation to me at all.”
Alice, who was holding her mother’s hand closely in hers while all these wonderful things were going on, looked wholly puzzled; but Ben thrust his hands into the pockets of his new trousers,—jingled the two silver quarters he had earned by helping Mr. Danforth an hour that morning, after the drive,—and said thoughtfully: “Then Elsa hasn’t you for a real grandmother. Does she know it?”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Danforth; “I told her after she came from the Convalescent Home this morning.”
“I am all the gladder she is going to have Susie!” cried Alice; then she quickly clapped her rounded hand over her mouth.
But Ben had more questions to ask, so he did not notice that Alice had told. “Are you very rich, Grandmother Gray?”
“Yes,” she answered, rather surprised that the boy should ask this.
“Will you give Peggy—I mean Alice—some pretty dresses, same as Elsa and Betty have?”