“Come in,” said Grandma Bascom, to the rap which she gave with her whip-handle on the little old door.
“How do you do to-day?” asked Alexia. Then she saw that the old lady had been crying.
“I’m so sorry for you,” she cried, laying her hand in its neat driving-glove on the poor withered one; while,—“She’s gone, and I don’t never ’xpect to live to see her again, nor him, nor those pretty creeters,” went on Grandma.
“Oh, yes, you will!” said Alexia, gulping down something in her throat. “Well, now, Grandma, I’m coming in to see you every day.”
“Hey?” cried Grandma.
So Alexia had to bend her tall figure so that she could scream it all over into Grandma’s ear; and this pleased the old lady so much, to think she was going to have company besides Mrs. Higby, that Alexia in great satisfaction pulled up a chair to the bedside, and began to tell all about the getting off, and what Polly said, and how she came running back the last thing after she had bidden her good-by to say over again, “Now, Alexia, remember dear Grandma Bascom.”
“Oh, the pretty creeter!” cried the old lady, quite overcome. And then Alexia rattled off what everybody else said, and how the children had each sent a kiss apiece to her, and what Ben and David did, and all about Jasper, till she was quite spent with her efforts.
“Though I don’t suppose she heard more than one word in ten,” Alexia told Pickering in relating the events of the day at dinner; “but her cap bobbed all the while, and she kept saying, ‘Yes, deary.’ And then, when I got through, she wanted to know what Joel did, and everything that people said about him, and the whole thing from beginning to end.”
“You better be prepared to tell that story every day; for depend upon it, Alexia, she’ll ask you for it,” said Pickering.