“There, there,” murmured Tom, consolingly, “we’re most home. Try to think of something else, Berty—you’ll live to do lots of work for the children yet.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
GRANDMA’S REQUEST
For three weeks the weather had been chilly and disagreeable. “The winter will set in early,” the oldest inhabitants were prophesying, when suddenly the full glory of the Indian summer burst upon the city.
Berty was delighted. “Dear Grandma will get better now,” she kept saying, hopefully. “This is what she wants—just a little warm sunshine before the winter comes.”
Grandma’s health had for some time been a cause of anxiety to her many friends. All through the autumn she had been ailing, and strangely quiet, even for her. And she had complained of feeling cold, a thing she had never done before in her life. Nothing seemed to warm her, not even the blazing fires that Berty kept in some of the many open fireplaces with which the old house was well supplied.
To-day there was a change. When the warm, lovely sunshine came streaming into her room, Grandma had got out of bed. She had come down-stairs, and, very quietly, but with a gentle smile that sent Berty into an ecstasy of delight, she had visited every room in the house.
The guinea-pigs and pigeons in the wood-shed, the two women working in the kitchen, had been made glad by a call from her, and now she was resting on a sofa in the parlour.
“I feel twenty years younger to see you going about!” exclaimed Berty, delightedly, as she tucked a blanket round her.