But we are wandering away from the talk by the fire—grandmother and aunty in their low chairs working—the three children lying in various attitudes on the hearthrug, for hearthrug there was, seldom as such superfluities are to be seen at Châlet. Grandmother was too "English" to have been satisfied with her pretty drawing-room without one—a nice fluffy, flossy one, which the children were so fond of burrowing in that grandmother declared she would need a new one by the time the winter was over!
"Can't you tell it to us to-night then, grandmother dear?" said Molly.
"I would rather think it over a little first," said grandmother. "You forget, Molly, that old people's memories are not like young ones. And, as Marie says, it is very curious how, the older one gets, the further back things are those that one remembers the most distinctly. The middle part of my life is hazy compared with the earlier part. I can remember the patterns of some of my dresses as a very little girl—I can remember words said and trifling things done fifty years ago better than little things that happened last month."
"How queer!" said Molly. "Shall we all be like that, grandmother dear, when we get old?"
Grandmother laid down her knitting and looked at the children with a soft smile on her face.
"Yes, dears, I suppose so. It is the 'common lot.' I remember once asking my grandmother a question very like that."
"Your grandmother!" exclaimed all the children—Molly adding, "Had you ever a grandmother, grandmother dear?"
"Oh, Molly, how can you be so silly?" said Ralph and Sylvia, together.
"I'm not silly," said Molly. "It is you that are silly not to understand what I mean. I am sure anybody might. Of course I mean can grandmother remember her—did she know her? Supposing anybody's grandmother died before they were born, then they wouldn't ever have had one, would they now?"
Molly sat up on the rug, and tossed back her hair out of her eyes, convinced that her logic was unanswerable.