Sometimes (as often as expedient), you asked her for a penny — never more, and then: 

“Now, Willie, what do you want with a penny?  I haven’t got it.  Run along now.”

“Aw, Gran’ma, don’t make a feller tell what he’s goin’ to buy.  I know you got one — Look’n see!  Please, Gran’ma!”

Slowly the wrinkled hand would fumble for that skirt-pocket which was always so hard to locate — and from its depths there would come the old worn leather wallet with a strap around it — and slowly, (gee! how s-l-o-w-l-y), — after much fumbling, during which you were never sure whether you were going to get it or not . . . the penny would come forth and be placed (with seeming reluctance) in the grimy, dirty boy-hand.  And usually, just as you reached the door on your hurried way to the nearest candy-shop, she would scare you almost stiff by calling you back, and say: 

Wait a minute, Willie, I found another one that I didn’t know was in here!”

And then you kissed her wrinkled, soft check and ran away thinking, after all, grandmother was pretty good.

Good?

Can a woman stick to a man through sixty-odd years — and keep his linen and his broadcloth — and bear him children — and make them into fine wives and husbands — and take them back to her bosom when their mates turn against them — and raise a bunch of riotous grandchildren — and manage such a household as ours with never a complaint — get up at five o’clock every morning and sit up till half-after nine o’clock every night — busy all the time — and nurse her own and other folks’ ailments without a murmur — and submerge self completely in her constant doing for others — can a frail woman so live for eighty-six years and be anything less than good?

And then, at the end of the long journey she was still trudging patiently and gladly along, side by side with Grandfather — making less fuss over the years — old pain in her knees than we make now over a splinter in a finger — going daily and uncomplainingly about her manifold duties.

And at night, about an hour before bedtime, she would sit down in the black-upholstered rocker almost behind the big base burner — her first quiet moment in all the long day — head resting against the chair’s high back — and doze and listen to the fitful conversation in the room, or to someone reading — giving everything, demanding nothing — as had been her wont all the long years!

And Christmas eve . . . (I’ll have to go a bit slow now) . . .  On Christmas eve, you remember, when out-of-doors the big snow-flakes were slowly and softly fluttering down, grandmother would get the huge Bible and her treasure-box and bring them up to the little round table covered with its red cloth . . .  And you’d get a chair and come up close (’cause you knew what was happening) . . .  Then she would read you a wonderful story out of the Bible about the love of God so great that He sent His only-begotten Son to be a Light unto the