"I'm thinking of your father," he said, as the little boy looked at him inquiringly; "you're like what he was at your age, except that you're delicate looking and he was the picture of health. I'm real glad to see you, Billy, but I wish your poor mother'd come with you. Often I've wanted to invite you both to visit us, but the Missus don't take much to strangers, and—well, I let the time slip by—" He broke off, a regretful, troubled expression on his good-natured countenance.
"Who is the Missus?" inquired Billy, rather anxiously.
"My wife," was the brief response.
The little boy looked curious. He knew that his father's mother had died when his father had been a baby, and that his father had had a stepmother, but he had been told nothing about his grandfather's second wife.
"She isn't really my grandmother," he remarked, after a few minutes' thought.
"But you must try to please her and obey her as much as though she was," William Brown said quickly.
"Oh, of course I will," Billy agreed.
"She was a widow when I married her, with one little girl," his grandfather explained. "That little girl's the wife of John Dingle, the postmaster now—they keep the village shop. They've two children—Harold, about your age, and poor little May."
"Why do you say 'poor little May?'" asked Billy.
"Because she's rather wanting here," William Brown said, tapping his forehead meaningly; "not silly exactly, but—well, you'll see for yourself. Cut along, Jenny!"