And she sez, as I took her into my arms gently and kissed her poor little pale face time and agin, she sez:
“My own Grandma!” Now jest see the deepness and pure wisdom of that remark!
Now, fools might say that because I wuz her father’s stepmother that I wuzn’t her own Grandmother.
But she see further down; she see into the eternal truth of things. She knew that by all the divine rights of a pure unselfish love and the kinship of congenial souls, that her Pa wuz my own boy, and she wuz my own, heart of my heart, soul of my soul.
Yes, there it wuz, jest as she had always done, goin’ right down into any deep subject or conundrum and gettin’ the right answer to it imegiatly and to once.
Curius, hain’t it? and she not more’n four and a half—exceedingly curius and beautiful.
And as I bent there over her, she put up her little thin hand to my cheek and touched it with a soft caress, then brushed my hair back with the lily soft fingers, and then touched my cheek agin lightly but lovingly.
It wuz as good as a kiss, or several of ’em, I don’t know which I would ruther have, if I had been told to chuse between ’em at the pint of the bayonet—some kisses, or these caressin’ little fingers on my face.
They wuz both sweet as sweet could be, and tender and lovin’. And she wuz “my own sweet little baby,” as I told her morn’n a dozen times.