Page:Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil.djvu/85

Rh now; she had a funny way of crinkling up her eyes when she laughed.

"'I'll take it down for you, Mrs. Watterby,' she says; and, my land, if she didn't pull out every pin and let her hair tumble down her back. It was a foot below her waist, too. I never saw such a head o' hair."

Bob looked up at the old woman with shining eyes.

"That was my mother," he said quietly.

"Your mother!" Grandma Watterby's tone was startled. Then her face broke into a wrinkled smile.

"Well, now, ain't I stupid?" she demanded eagerly. "My head isn't what it used to be. Course you are Faith Saunders' son. She married David Henderson, a likely young carpenter. Dear, dear, to think you're Faith's boy. My, wouldn't your grandma have been proud to see you!"

"Did you know her?" asked Bob hungrily. Deprived of kin for so many years, even the claim to relatives, he was pathetically starved for the details taken for granted by the average boy.

"Your grandpa and your grandma," pronounced Grandma Watterby, "died 'bout a year after your ma was married. I guess they never saw you. Your aunties was all of twenty years older than she was. Your ma was the youngest of a