He pulled off his boots and threw them in the corner, then paddled up stairs and came down in his shoes. For no reason at all Gretchen-Cecilia and her mother chased him around the kitchen table with a broom and a feather duster, and then out on to the back porch.
VI
Conferences
The grandfather called me into the front room and handed me a book.
“Yer a schol-ar. What do you think of that?”
It was a history of the county. The frontispiece was a portrait of Judge Somebody. But the book naturally opened at about the tenth page, on an atrocious engraving of this goodly old man and his not ill-looking wife. He breathed easier when I found it. It was plainly a basis of family pride. I read the inscription.
“So you two are the oldest inhabitants?” I asked.
“The oldest per-pet-ual in-habitants. I was born in this coun-ty and have nev-er left it. My wife is some young-er, but she has nev-er left it, since she married me.”
Even the old lady grew civil. She tapped a brooch near her neck. “They gave me this breast-pin at the last old-settlers’ picnic.”
The old man continued: “All the old farm is still here in our hands, but mostly rented. It brings something, something. Our big income is from my son’s well-digging. He never speculates and he makes money.”
It seemed a part of the old man’s pride to have even the passing stranger realize they were well-fixed. In a furtive attempt to do justice to their station in life they had a tall clock in the corner, quite new and beautiful. And, as I discovered later, there was up stairs a handsome bath-room. The rest of that new house was clean and white, but helplessly Spartan.