‘What makes you so long out of your grave, grannie?’ I asked.
‘They won’t let me into it, my dear.’
‘Who won’t let you, grannie?’
‘My own grandson there, and the woman down the stair.’
‘But you don’t really want to go—do you, grannie?’
‘I do want to go, Willie. I ought to have been there long ago. I am very old; so old that I’ve forgotten how old I am. How old am I?’ she asked, looking up at my uncle.
‘Nearly ninety-five, grannie; and the older you get before you go the better we shall be pleased, as you know very well.’
‘There! I told you,’ she said with a smile, not all of pleasure, as she turned her head towards me. ‘They won’t let me go. I want to go to my grave, and they won’t let me! Is that an age at which to keep a poor woman from her grave?’
‘But it’s not a nice place, is it, grannie?’ I asked, with the vaguest ideas of what the grave meant. ‘I think somebody told me it was in the churchyard.’
But neither did I know with any clearness what the church itself meant, for we were a long way from church, and I had never been there yet.