Every one laughed and Mrs. Martin said:
“It’s my glasses, I guess. Always, up until a week ago, I used the kind of glasses that pinch on your nose,” she told Mrs. Bobbsey and Mrs. Watson. “Then my eyes began to get worse and I went to the doctor who said I needed different glasses, and he wrote out the kind I should get on a paper.
“I took it to a shop and they made me these glasses that fasten on over my ears and stay on better than the nose kind. And I can see ever so much better. I think it must be my glasses that make me appear strange to the children.”
“Yes, I guess it is,” said Nan. “I never saw you with glasses on before.”
“Well, I hope you will get used to them, my dear, and like me,” went on Mrs. Martin. “I am quite proud of these glasses. I hope nothing happens to them,” she said anxiously. “If they got broken or I lost them, I could hardly see at all, my eyes have changed so. I am getting old, I guess,” she said, with a sigh. “But then we all have to do that—even Baby Jenny is older than when I so foolishly took her away and left her on your steps,” she told Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Yes, and my twins are growing up, too,” said their mother. “Though sometimes, when they act foolishly, fall into brooks and ride on hay forks, I fear they are growing younger instead of older,” she concluded, with a laugh.
“They can’t be young but once,” Mrs. Martin said, as she took off her glasses to wipe them on a piece of silk she carried in her pocket. Baby Jenny had reached up and put her fingers on the glass, making a blurred place. “No, they can’t be young but once—more’s the pity. Have all the fun you can when you are little,” she advised the children.
“I guess you don’t need to tell them that,” said their mother.
Flossie and Freddie went into the yard to play. Bert and Nan, after having talked a while longer with Mrs. Martin, also left the room. Later they learned that Mrs. Martin had come to stay a week or two with her cousin, Mrs. Watson.
That evening after supper the Bobbsey twins made up their minds that they were going to like Mrs. Martin very much, for she gathered them about her after the evening’s play and told them some fine stories. Even Bert, who liked out-of-door games more than he did books, was interested in the tales the old lady told.