“You are just like all the rest,” said the grandmother--“ashamed of your relations because you are so fine; and if it had not been for your relations--she was your poor mamma’s cousin, Miss Sairah--if it was only that, and out of respect to me--” “Don’t call me Sairah, please,” said the indignant little visitor. “I do hate it so; and I have not done any thing that I know of to be called Miss for. What is the use of quarreling, grandmamma? Do let us be comfortable a little. You can’t think how cold it is out of doors. Don’t you think it is rather nice to be an old lady and sit by the fire and have every body come to see you, and no need to take any trouble with making calls or any thing? I think it must be one of the nicest things in the world.” “Do you think _you_ would like it?” the old woman said grimly from the other side of the fire. “It is different, you know,” said Sara, drooping her pretty head as she sat before the fire with the red light gleaming in her hair. “You were once as young as me, and you can go back to that in your mind; and then mamma was once as young as me, and you can go back to that. I should think it must feel like walking out in a garden all your own, that nobody else has any right to; while the rest of us, you know--” “Ah!” said the old woman with a cry; “but a garden that you once tripped about, and once saw your children tripping about, and now you have to hobble through it all alone. Oh child, child! and never a sound in it, but all the voices gone and all the steps that you would give the world to hear!” Sara roused herself up out of her meditation, and gave a startled astonished look into the corner where the cross old grandmother was sobbing in the darkness. The child stumbled to her feet, startled and frightened and ashamed of what she had done, and went and threw herself upon the old woman’s neck. And poor old Mrs. Fennell sobbed and pushed her granddaughter away, and then hugged and kissed her, and stroked her pretty hair and the feather in her hat and her soft velvet and fur. The thoughtless girl had given her a stab, and yet it was such a stab as opens while it wounds. She sobbed, but a touch of sweetness came along with the pain, and for the moment she loved again, and grew human and motherlike, warming out of the chills of her hard old age.