"If you want to turn your granddaughter from the stage, let her start vocal training. You'll see that before twelve months she'll have enough of it. It would keep her content for the present, and in the meantime she might marry," I contended.
"If I could be sure she wouldn't come in contact with them actin' and writin' fools; if she was to marry one of them it would be all up with her. Do you know anythink about teachers?"
"Yes; I would be only too pleased to see to that part of it. Your granddaughter is a great pleasure to me. She gives me some interest in life which, having no relations and being unfit for permanent occupation, I would otherwise lack."
"Well, I'm sure Dawn would interest anybody, and I think you're a good companion for her. She seems to have took up with you, and you've evidently been a person that's seen somethink, an' can tell her this, that, an' the other, but as for that she don't want no tellin' to be better than most. Some people!—" Grandma always worked herself up to a pitch of congested choler when these unworthy individuals were mentioned.
"I'll think about the singin' lessons if they ain't beyond reason. She's been terrible good lately, and deserves somethink. Here's Larry Witcom arrove, an' there's Carry gone out to him. I want to see him meself; he's been a little too strong with his prices lately, but he's the obliginest feller in many ways. I don't hear anythink about it not bein' Carry's week in the kitchen w'en Larry comes. She's always ready to give Dawn a hand then. But we was all young once; I can remember w'en I worked a point, whether it was me turn or not, to get near Jim Clay."
"Dawn, I think the battle for the singing lessons is half won," I said to that individual when I met her privately a few minutes later.
"Really, it can't be true!" said the girl with an intonation of delight, as she drew a tea-towel she had been washing through her shapely hands and wrung it dry.
Uncle Jake then entered, and cut short further private discussion.
"There, Dawn!" he said, tossing a pair of trousers on the kitchen-table, "the seat of them is out, an' I want to put 'em on to do a little blacksmithin'—they're dirty."
"That's easy to be seen and known too, as some people's things are always dirty," said she. "When do you want them?"