With love to both of you.
EDITH.
That had been the beginning. To Grandpa and Grandma Burton it had come
like a thunderclap on a clear day. They had known, to be sure, that son
John frowned a little at their lonely life; but that there should come
this sudden transplanting, this ruthless twisting and tearing up of
roots that for sixty years had been burrowing deeper and deeper--it was
almost beyond one's comprehension.
And there was the auction!
"We shan't need that, anyway," Grandma Burton had said at once. "What
few things we don't want to keep I shall give away. An auction, indeed!
Pray, what have we to sell?"
"Hm-m! To be sure, to be sure," her husband had murmured; but his face
was troubled, and later he had said, apologetically: "You see, Hannah,
there's the farm things. We don't need them."
On Tuesday night Mrs. John and the somewhat awesome Maria--to whom
Grandpa and Grandma Burton never could learn not to curtsy--arrived; and
almost at once Grandma Burton discovered that not only "farm things,"
but such precious treasures as the hair wreath and the parlor--set were
auctionable. In fact, everything the house contained, except their
clothing and a few crayon portraits, seemed to be in the same category.
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