“Why does Granny drink?”

They were alone in the living-room at the time, she seated in her big easy chair by the window and he, as usual, kneeling on the hassock at her feet.

She looked up at him with as much surprise as if he had hit her viciously.  A deeper red flowed into her cheeks that kept their soft pinkness even when she was thought at death’s door and lost it only under the pressure of extreme anger.

At the same time a look came into her eyes that gave Keith a momentary scare.  It was only a flash, however, and changed quickly into something like the helplessness that used to characterize her glance in moments of heavy depression.  Her voice trembled a little as she spoke: 

“Because Granny’s life has been very hard, and not very happy.”

“Tell me about it,” urged the boy.

There was a long pause during which he watched his mother’s face closely.  Gradually its expression changed into one of resignation, and then into determination, as if she had made up her mind to be done once for all with a task that could not be avoided indefinitely.  It was a long story she told, at first hesitatingly, then with an eagerness that betrayed an awakening purpose.  Everything she said stuck deeply in the boy’s mind, and whenever he thought of Granny’s life afterwards, he had the impression of having learned all about it at that one time, although the likelihood is that many details were picked up by degrees and dovetailed into the memory of that first narrative as integral parts of it.

“Your grandmother was not born to be a servant,” his mother began.  “She was a rich man’s daughter, and there was not a thing her father didn’t want to do for her.  Yet he left her in the hands of strangers who cheated her of her rights and treated her as if she had been a beggar....”

“Why did they do it,” the boy asked, quite unable to grasp the idea of such a thing.

“Because they could make a little more money that way, and because they cared for nothing but money.  Promise me, Keith, that whatever happens to you, and whatever the temptation be, you will never put money above everything else.”

Keith shook his head earnestly, meaning it to be sign of assent.  He was a highly impressible child, and when his mother spoke to him like that, he used literally to choke with a feeling that he could never, never do anything but what she asked, but when another rush of feeling swept over him, the old promises were also likely to be swept out of his mind.

“Those people did the worst thing any one can do to anybody else.  They twisted Granny’s life so that it could never be set right again.  And so she became what you see her now....”

“You mean she just couldn’t help herself,” Keith put in.

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” she agreed.  Then she stopped as if struck by another thought, and said very slowly: 

“Although, if she had been really strong....”