He was a big, kind-looking
old man, his gray hair waving round a bald dome, his eyes bright
blue. He was looking at a newspaper. It was a crumpled old
paper that had been wrapped around someone's shoes; the Beechams
didn't spend pennies for newspapers nowadays.
The long brushes were quiet from their whirling. On the rack of
finished shoes two pairs awaited their owners; on the other rack
were a few that had evidently just come in. Yet Grandpa looked
as tired as if he had mended a hundred pairs.
He looked up when the bell tinkled. "Oh, Ellen-girl! Anything
wrong?"
"Only Gramma says please come to supper. Everything's getting
spoiled."
Grandpa glanced at his old clock. It said half-past five. "I keep
tinkering with it, but it's seen its best days. Like me."
He took off his denim apron, rolled down his sleeves, put on his
hat and coat, and locked the door behind them. But not before he
had looked wistfully around the little place, with its smell of
beeswax, leather and dye, where he had worked so long. Its walls
were papered with his favorite calendars: country scenes that
reminded him of his farm boyhood; roly-poly babies in bathtubs; a
pretty girl who looked, he said, like Grandma--a funny idea to
Rose-Ellen. Patched linoleum, doorstep hollowed by thousands of
feet--Grandpa looked at everything as if it were new and bright,
and as if he loved it.
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