"But, mother, dear," Mrs. John had returned, with a laugh, in response
to Grandma Burton's horrified remonstrances, "just wait until you see
your rooms, and how full they are of beautiful things, and then you'll
understand."
"But they won't be--these," the old voice had quavered.
And Mrs. John had laughed again, and had patted her mother-in-law's
cheek, and had echoed-but with a different shade of meaning--"No, they
certainly won't be these!"
In the attic now, on a worn black trunk, sat the little old man, and
down on the floor before an antiquated cradle knelt his wife.
"They was all rocked in it, Seth," she was saying,--"John and the twins
and my two little girls; and now there ain't any one left only John--and
the cradle."
"I know, Hannah, but you ain't
usin' that nowadays, so you don't
really need it," comforted the old man. "But there's my big chair now--
seems as though we jest oughter take that. Why, there ain't a day goes
by that I don't set in it!"
"But John's wife says there's better ones there, Seth," soothed the old
woman in her turn, "as much as four or five of 'em right in our rooms."
"So she did, so she did!" murmured the man. "I'm an ongrateful thing; so
I be." There was a long pause.
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