"But he's never shown you either her or a letter from her?" asked Mrs. Farnsworth.
"Of course not—how could he? Oh, I must say I admire him for it! You see, I found him living practically in the gutter, sleeping Heaven knows where and eating Heaven knows what; but through it all he hung onto this grandmother business as his one last tie with the world of respectability and good clothes and enough to eat. I think I never saw a person get so much out of a mere idea."
"It shows imagination, certainly," murmured Mrs. Farnsworth appreciatively, but her remark was drowned in the question of her right-hand neighbor, who had been listening to James' narrative and joined in with:
"Have you ever succeeded in getting any idea of what the old lady is like? I should think the boy's mental picture of a grandmother might form a key to his whole character."
"No," replied James; "I've never asked him anything very definite. I must find out something more about her some time."
"What would the ideal grandmother be like, I wonder?" queried Mrs. Farnsworth. "Yours or mine, for example? Mine would be a dear old soul with a white cap and curls, whom I should always go to visit over Thanksgiving and eat too much pumpkin pie."
"Yes, I think that comes pretty near my ideal, too," said James; "provided she didn't want to kiss me too often and had no other bad habits."
"How idyllic!" said Mrs. Farnsworth's other neighbor. "Arcadians, both of you. I confess to something much more sophisticated; something living in town, say, with a box at the opera. Mrs. Harriman, it's your turn."
"Oh, leave me out!" answered Mrs. Harriman, a woman who still, at forty, gave the impression of being too young for her husband. "You see, I have a grandmother still living."
"So have I," irrepressibly retorted her neighbor, whose name was Nesmith; "two of them, in fact, and neither is anything like my ideal! You can feel quite at your ease."