"Take a tip from me, Andrew! March into your grandma bravely; she's the best woman I've seen; you ought to be proud to have such a grandma! She's in the right and Mrs Bray's in the wrong. Let her hammer you for all she's worth, and every whack you get feel proud that she's able to give it at her time of life, and I bet when you're a man you'll be telling every one that you had a grandma who was worth owning. When she leaves off tell her that this is the last time she'll ever have to do it for anything like that, and see if you don't feel more a man than you ever did before. Promise me that's what you'll do."
"Is that what you'd do if you was me?" he inquired with surprise.
"That's what you'd do if you were me," I replied with a smile. "Just try that. Never mind if your grandma does go for you hot and strong."
Andrew wiped the table, wrung out his dishcloth in the back-handed manner peculiar to his sex, hung it on a nail behind the door, dried his hands on his trousers, which for once were not "busted up," and with a less rueful expression than he had exhibited for several hours, went forth to meet his grandma.
About ten minutes later he returned blubbering, but it was a sunshiny shower, and I did not despise the lad for his tears, for he had a soft nature, and was quite a child despite his big stature and sixteen years.
"Well?" I inquired, recognising that he was anxious to relate his experience.
"She banged away with the strap of the breechin' till she was winded, and then I said I hoped she'd never have to beat me again for acting the goat in other people's gardens that didn't concern me, an' she didn't beat me no more then, but I had plenty as it was," he said, rubbing his seat and the calves of his legs.
"Well done, stick to that, and be thankful for such a grandma!"
"She ain't a bad old sort when you come to consider," he said with that patronage, also an attribute of extreme youth or unsubdued snobbishness, and when compared, snobbishness and youth have some similar characteristics.
Next item on the programme was Mr Pornsch, whom grandma invited to remain to midday dinner, and the old lady being sufficiently human to denounce a swell far more fiercely behind his back than to his face, in consideration of this one's presence, once more entrusted us to sugar our own puddings, regardless of consequences.