Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/180

Rh "You want to lose me in a home of my own!" said Floyd reproachfully.

"I don't think of losing you," Mrs. Halket replied. "In what I say—though it's all true—I'm partly urged on by selfishness. You will hardly understand it, Floyd; but when a woman gets to be as old as I am, she does n't want any loose ends in the affairs of those she cares for. She's like the child who says at the end of the story, 'But you forgot to tell what happened to the bad man after he was arrested and put into prison.' It seems so unsatisfactory to die without an idea of what sort of a life the person you most love is going to have—or who is the person that he will most love. I consider it almost bad art."

"But when you talk about dying—" Floyd protested.

"Ah, I'm an old woman, quite an old woman," his grandmother reminded him with some pride. "Seventy-one my next birthday, Floyd,—seventy-one. Can't you imagine how comfortable it would make such an old person feel to see you settled and happy? Nothing to trouble one then with disturbing speculations and questionings—just let one go off peacefully dozing. Well,—to keep interest in life awake to the end—we want that of course—there might perhaps be a little great-grandchild. Floyd," she said, and it surprised him, looking up, to see that there were tears in her eyes,—"yes, it would really please me very much to have a little great-grandchild."

Her appeal, that he had at first been disposed to regard lightly, he found suddenly touching.

"Grandmother," he said, "I'll have to tell you. I would n't have any prejudice against getting married. But the girl I cared about—she married another fellow. It was Lydia Dunbar. I—I can't see any other girl."

"Oh!" There was pain in the gentle exclamation. "Forgive me, Floyd. I did n't know—why did you never tell me? I might have helped."

"No. It's not the sort of thing a man likes to talk