One day, when I was small, my grandmother called me to her knee, and asked me if I knew where the White House was. No doubt I did, for I not only knew the town well, being a truant, but the green country for many a mile around. However, I did not know the house by name, and shook my head, at the same time looking at her with some anxiety, thinking that the White House was a place to whitewash the souls of wicked boys. Then she began to describe its beautiful situation, its numerous windows, the long drive through trees and the acres of green land that surrounded it. Did I know it now? I should think I did. It stood a long way back off a main road, and we truants often passed it. And we knew the apple orchard which belonged to that house, but was a long way from it; and it was less than a week before my grandmother asked this question, that I and a boy called "Trousers" had trespassed on the land, and filled our pockets and open shirts with red apples. So, when she continued talking about this house, I became a great deal confused, thinking that someone had been to her making enquiries of me; and I only had one thought to console me--"Trousers" was guilty also. My relief can be imagined when I found that such was not the case, but that my grandmother was thinking of her own days of childhood and, having no one else near, could not contain herself, but must make a confidant of a thoughtless boy, or--to use her own words--"a little black and a rodney." She was looking at the child that was dead in her, and could not feel me tremble at her knee, nor see my colour come and go. However, when I began to see that she knew nothing of my doings, and began to speak of her own childhood, I gradually became interested. The White House, it seemed, had once belonged to a relative, and my grandmother had lived there for several months as a little girl. Now, my grandmother was an only child, and that she was allowed out of her mother's care for several months seemed strange. Perhaps it was owing to domestic strife. Her mother had married a worthless fellow who had at last drunk himself to death. So, I suppose she sent her only child away while she took steps to get rid of him and make a comfortable home of her own. Having a little property, and being a woman of great spirit, she ordered him out of the house and dared him to enter again. After which she started a small private school and, having the rent of four little houses, lived happy with her only child. No doubt she had come of good birth and was well educated. It was much against her wish that her daughter married my grandfather, in spite of his being captain of his own vessel--because of his want of education. Nevertheless, she lived to see her daughter married to an honest and affectionate man, even though his grammar was bad, and his roaring voice was not ashamed of it.