"You shouldn't begin by saying 'anybody's grandmother,'" remarked Ralph. "You put anybody in the possessive case, which means, of course, that the grandmother belonged to the anybody, and then you make out that the anybody never had one."
Molly retorted by putting her fingers in her ears and shaking her head vehemently at her brother. "Be quiet, Ralph," she said. "What's the good of muddling up what I say, and making my head feel so uncomfortable when you know quite well what I mean? Please, grandmother dear, will you go on talking as soon as I take my fingers out of my ears, and then he will have to leave off puzzling me."
"And what am I to talk about?" asked grandmother.
"Tell us about your grandmother. If you remember things long ago so nicely, you must remember story sort of things of then," said Molly insinuatingly.
"I really don't, my dear child. Not just at this moment, anyhow."
"Well, tell us about your grandmother: what was she like? was she like you?"
Grandmother shook her head.
"That I cannot say, my dear; I have no portrait of her, nor have I ever seen one since I have been grown up. She died when I was about fifteen, and as my father was not the eldest son, few, if any, heirlooms fell to his share. And a good many years before my grandmother's death—at the time of her husband's death—the old home was sold, and she came to live in a curious old-fashioned house, in the little county town a few miles from where we lived. This old house had belonged to her own family for many, many years, and, as all her brothers were dead, it became hers. She was very proud of it, and even during my grandfather's life they used to come in from the country to spend the worst of the winter there. Dear me! what a long time back it takes us! were my grandmother living now, she would be—let me see—my father would have been a hundred years old by now. I was the youngest of a large family you know, dears. His mother would have been about a hundred and thirty. It takes us back to the middle of George the Second's reign."
"Yes," said Molly so promptly, that every one looked amazed, "George the First, seventeen hundred and fourteen, George the Second, seventeen hundred and twenty-seven, George the Third, seventeen hundred and——"
"When did you learn that—this morning I suppose?" observed Ralph with biting sarcasm.