Her eyes were large and dark,
with a strange, melancholy gleam in them.
I never knew the secrets of Mrs. Philanders heart. She had often a tired,
tense look about the mouth, and seemed often sorely discontent; but she
had the sweetest voice I ever heard. She was familiarly called Madeline.
Grandpa or Cap'n Keeler was over eighty years old. He had a tall,
powerful frame--at least, it spoke of great power in the past--and I
thought his eye must have been uncommonly dark and keen once.
From his manly irascibility of temperament, and his frequent would-be
authoritativeness of tone, one might have inferred, from a passing
glimpse, that Grandpa Keeler was something of a tyrant in the family; but
I soon learned that his sway was of an extremely vague and illusory
nature.
Grandma Keeler was twenty years his junior. She had not married him until
she was herself quite advanced in life, and had had one husband.
"To be sure," I heard her say once, "I ain't quite so far advanced as
husband, but, then, it don't make no difference how young the girl is,
you know."
She used to sit down and laugh--one of Grandma's "r'al good laughs" was
incompatible with a standing posture--until the tears rolled down her
cheeks, and she had to wipe them off with the corner of her apron.
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