LARRY'S GRANDMOTHER. I.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 36, 8 September 1904, Page 23

LARRY'S GRANDMOTHER. I.

Old Mrfe. Doherty's eyes had looked on sorrow, but always daiuntlessly. Thus- it happened that their humor was as uadimined, their friending s as unquenched, at seventy as half a century cailier. Out oi a netwoik of wrtfnkles they bpaiklcd cheerfully, their blue lustre heightened by the parchment brownness of her weatherbeaten skin. And whenever they dwelt upon her grandson, Larry Doherty, they took a new dapth of kindness and brightness. She accounted herself a very lucky woman, she was wont to tell her neighbors. To be sure, her husband, wheai they had been married a little over a year, had beesn kUled in an explosion, but he had left her Larry, her own sen Larry, the baby in arms, who had grown to be the best and most stalwart of sons. She dwelt upon Larry's memory with great tenderness, for he was only a memory those many years now. The ship that was bearing him to America with his mother, his pretty wife, a,nd their rosy children, had been wrecked off the Banks. Only one of the life-boats had ever been heard of again That one a 'schooner from Falmoutta Cape had sighted and saved ; and on it were old Mrs. Doherty wiith her youngest grandchild, the baby Larry, in her arms.

To some the chronicle would now have seemed one of good tortjune ; hut Mrs. Doherty translated calamity Jo blessing in her own fashion.

' Since 'twas Cod's will I should lose him an' "be cast up alone here in a strange land, thrnk what a blessin' it was I had the baby wid me — sometjnn' to be workin' for, some-thin' to be carin' about ! Antd to land here of ali places in the says— sure nivcr were people so kino ! An' me boy's son growin' up all that could be wis|hed. Whin me own time comes for gom' sure 'twill be the happy life I'll have to account for ! '

Slho w,as a biusy creature even after the dreadful struggle of her early years in the new country was past. Her cabm on the hill shone with cleanliness, matching tlhat of her New England neighbors. She \\a^ a dairywoman of note, albeit but two cows composed her stock. She ha)d a chicken-yard screened from her small vegetable patch and flower-bed. In the old days sihe had trudged across the windy half-mile of bridge ttfiafc connected the cape with Fal mouth Town on the mainland to the east, selling, her eggs and butter. Nowadays the new railroad and Larry, proud incumbent of a [position in the town, conspired to carTy them for her.

Larry, of course, had no conception of the fact that sihe was a miracle among grandmothers, hut he loved her and depended upon her and imposed uprn her and took her as an every-day matter — until the Downings came to Fal mouth Cape. Then his eyes were opened to the fact thafc his relative was not as other women are. Myrtle Downing, blonde, given to giggling, anid admitting twenty-three years, enlightened him.

'My ! ' she said, when their acquaintance had p'Ogressed to the point of personalities, ' ain't your grandmother fu,n!ny ? '

' What's funny aboiut her ? ' demanded Larry, startled as if it had beon suggested to him that some fact of natiure was out of the natural order.

' Now, who did you ever sec dress like that ? ' retorted Myrtle unanswerably

Whetreupon Larry, recalling the difference between the customary dress of the community and the neat peasant garb which his grandmother had never discarded, 'blushed for her. Later he sought with gifts to beguile heir into a fasthion which Miss Downing assured him was correct — Miss Downing, whose mother wore curl-papers during the greater part of the day and read the fashion journals by her untrimmed lamp in the evenings !

Mrs. Dofaorty was outwardly grateful, though unbeguilod. To herself she said shrewdly and sadly : VHe niver found out for himself what I was wearin'. No i! An' it's little he'd have oared for antiywan's tellin' him, unless— unless ' — she sighed heavily. ' Well, I could have wished it another ! '

And the more Larry's grandmother saw of Miss Myrtle Downing, the more she wished that it migfat have been another. She saw Myrtle reading at the kitchen table, with only enough space cleared on it for her foolish book and her foolisth elbows. She saw cr^mmre; irons on 'the m,antcl-sihelf above the fireplace. She beheld shawls of pale pink and blue looked over Myrtle's slender shoulders, bangles o<n Myrtle's bare forearms, and buckles on Myrtle's run-down slippers. Afid she groaned and sihook her head.

Sho was much alone in her cabin d,uring the days of La'rry's wooing ; and the light went out of her eyes as it 'had never gone in all the years of her labor and sorrow.

' It's not iiis lcavin' me for another,' she useki to assure some inward accuser. ' Lord save us, didn't I .see me own do that, an' have joy wid him ? But this giri— tins baggage— what does she know about carin' ? He'll niver be happy wid her — her an' her curls ! '

it was Myrtle's obviously artificial ringlets to which the old woman took the most violent o'bgo.ction, making thorn t,ho srapec,oat, as it were, for all the girl's shai1 owners and shams. due, in a desperate moment, she made the mistake that wiser onos than yhe have made. She spoke contemptuously o>f hei graatdsan's sweetheart ;" she besought him to give Myrtle up. And she accomplished nothing but the electing of a wall of silence and ant atomism between herself and the 'boy for whom she lived.

And, so it finally came about that she heard from tho neighbors and not from himself of his contemplated marriage. Mrs. Downing, it was reported, had bewailed the aipipiroaching nuptials. ' The D-ahertys were io match for the Downing.?,' she lamented. And she ' had looked for Myrtle to do better ; with a face like Myrtle's" a miost cilulgont mate might have been reasonably expected. 'But the child was romantic, like her mamma, who had rejected heaven only knew what splendor to follow where her heart led !

'' Bu,t',s it's gom' to be awful hard on Myrtle,' the fond mother was quoted as ending, ' if she has to live with that old woman. Indeed, I don't believe sthe'll do it. It ain't that Myrtle would grudge her what she eats an' all that ; but a young bride, she naturally wantv) 'her hoime to herself.'

Now, though she knew that love would do strange things to tihe young, blinding them to the beauty of old ways and bidding them shut the windows upon peaceful old outlooks, still the stricken grandmother never doubted Larry's intentions towards herself. Never, she knew, woi'ald i L. occur to him to turn her adrift in her old age. Rut sihe herself, could she stay where alien eyes looked coldly upon her ?

*■ But if I go and live by meself,' she said, ' they'll '■-ay ho turned me out, they'll misjudge the poor, foolish boy. An' if I go, who'is to take care of him ?— for that baggage hadn't it in her. 'Deed, an' she doesn't make him happy even now '—which was true enough, as the nropt casual could observe.

Myrtle, aiming at the witcheries of coquetry, achieved pertness and a habit of nagging, and kept her lover in a state of irritation far enough removed both from the blissful uncertainty which she intended and tihe comfortable assurance which he regarded as his right.