Edith.
That had been the beginning. To Grandpa and Grandma Burton it had come like a thunderclap on a clear day. They had known, to be sure, that son John frowned a little at their lonely life; but that there should come this sudden transplanting, this ruthless twisting and tearing up of roots that for sixty years had been burrowing deeper and deeper--it was almost beyond one’s comprehension.
And there was the auction!
“We shan’t need that, anyway,” Grandma Burton had said at once. “What few things we don’t want to keep I shall give away. An auction, indeed! Pray, what have we to sell?”
“Hm-m! To be sure, to be sure,” her husband had murmured; but his face was troubled, and later he had said, apologetically: “You see, Hannah, there’s the farm things. We don’t need them.”
On Tuesday night Mrs. John and the somewhat awesome Maria--to whom Grandpa and Grandma Burton never could learn not to curtsy--arrived; and almost at once Grandma Burton discovered that not only “farm things,” but such precious treasures as the hair wreath and the parlor--set were auctionable. In fact, everything the house contained, except their clothing and a few crayon portraits, seemed to be in the same category.
“But, mother, dear,” Mrs. John had returned, with a laugh, in response to Grandma Burton’s horrified remonstrances, “just wait until you see your rooms, and how full they are of beautiful things, and then you’ll understand.”
“But they won’t be--these,” the old voice had quavered.
And Mrs. John had laughed again, and had patted her mother-in-law’s cheek, and had echoed-but with a different shade of meaning--“No, they certainly won’t be these!”
In the attic now, on a worn black trunk, sat the little old man, and down on the floor before an antiquated cradle knelt his wife.