Downstairs Letty guided the rubber-tired wheel chair out into the hall, down the front steps. She returned for Drusilla and seating her in the chair, tucked a soft velvet rug about her.
Graham took his place at the long handled bar. Gently he pushed the chair and the small cavalcade was on its way.
At first each child was quiet. Graham, ever mindful of the charge which was his, was very serious and his thoughts turned to his mother.
He wished she had taken this grandmother right into her own home to be watched over, loved and cared for tenderly. He wondered if his father, his ever busy father, would have liked that. Oh, why was it considered better for a grandmother, one who had fancies, to live alone in a small house, with every comfort it is true, but with no one of her very own close beside her!
He looked over at Suzanna. She was walking close to Drusilla, and talking earnestly as was her way. Suzanna never went out into the world but some object started a train of thought of keen interest. He could hear snatches of her talk. It was about the trees, stripped bare now, and their mood sad probably because of their denudement. Suzanna gazed with concern at their stark limbs stretching out, no longer able to shelter people or to sing softly when the wind blew through their leaves.
Drusilla contributed her share, too. She thought the trees knew that people did not need shelter from the hot sun when the snow was about to fly. And the snow could lie in such beautiful, straight lines on long, unleaved limbs.
And so they passed on from subject to subject, while Graham listened. And then little Daphne grew tired and began to lag. Graham seeing the child and about to make some suggestion for her comfort, was distracted by Peter's call. The boy had found a rabbit hole and wished he had Jerry with him to reach the rabbit, for which cruel wish both Suzanna and Maizie scolded him roundly. And he gazed at them with the same old perplexed gaze. Were these not the same sisters who looked complacently on while a homeless, helpless dog was turned out casually into an inhuman world?
Well, again he gave up the puzzle of their contrary attitudes. Perhaps understanding would come in the big-grown-up years.
But when they returned from examining the rabbit hole, they found little Daphne had curled herself up at Drusilla's feet. Drusilla had moved a little and the child hopping up on the foot-rest had put her small arms on Drusilla's knee, dropped her head and gone to sleep. Suzanna carefully covered her with part of the velvet rug.
So they started away again and came at last to a little lonely church set back from the road. It was a quaint little edifice, made of irregular purplish stone. The moss had crept up on one side softly, protectingly. You thought at once it had been built by loving hands and that loving souls had worshiped in it. And you knew that under its assumed and momentary air of expectancy it was sad in having outlived its usefulness. Its door was swung open hospitably and the children stopped to look in. Graham wheeled his grandmother close to the door so she too could gaze within.