There was a moment’s silence when they had left the room.  Grandpapa’s face was once more hidden in his newspaper; Grandmamma had taken up her netting again, but it did not go on very vigorously.

“I must warn Nurse,” she said at last.  “She means no harm, but she must be careful what she says before the children.  She forgets how big they are growing, and how they notice all they hear.”

“It was no great harm, after all,” said Grandpapa, more than half, to tell the truth, immersed in his paper.

“Not as said to a discreet person like Barbara,” replied Grandmamma.  “But still—­they have the right to all we can give them, the little dears, as long as we are here to give it.  I could not bear them ever to have the idea that we felt them a burden.”

“Certainly not,” agreed Grandpapa, looking up for a moment.  “A burden they can never be; still it is a great responsibility—­a great charge, in one sense, as Nurse said—­to have in our old age.  For, do the best we can, my love, we cannot be to them what their parents would have been.  Nor can we hope to be with them till we can see them able to take care of themselves.”

“There is no knowing,” said Grandmamma.  “God is good.  He may spare us yet some years for the little ones’ sakes.  And it is a mercy to think they have each other.  It is always ‘us’ with them—­never ‘me.’”

“Yes,” said Grandpapa, “they love each other dearly;” and as if that settled all the difficulties the future might bring, he disappeared finally into the newspaper.

Grandmamma, for her part, meant to disappear into her netting.  But somehow it did not go on as briskly as usual.  Her hands seemed to lag, and more than once she was startled by a tear rolling quickly down her thin soft old cheek—­one of the slow-coming, touching tears of old age.  She would have been sorry for Grandpapa to see that she was crying; she was always cheerful with him.  But of that there was no fear.  So Grandmamma sat and cried a little quietly to herself, for the children’s innocent words had roused some sad thoughts, and brought before her some pictures of happy pasts and happy “might-have-beens.”

“It is strange,” she thought to herself, “very strange to think of—­that we two, old and tired and ready to rest, should be here left behind by them all.  All my pretty little ones, who might almost, some of them, have been grandparents themselves by this time!  Left behind to take care of Duke’s babies—­ah, my brave boy, that was the hardest blow of all!  The others were too delicate and fragile for this world—­I learnt not to murmur at their so quickly taking flight.  But he—­so strong and full of life—­who had come through all the dangers of babyhood and childhood, who had grown up so good and manly, so fit to do useful work in the world—­was there no other victim for the deadly cholera’s clutch, out there in the burning East?” and Grandmamma shuddered as