“Do you mean to say that Gran’papa——” And then, breaking off in that irritating way of hers, had gone up without another word to Papa’s room. Had stayed there till supper-time—had not even come down to say how do you do to the rector—had spent every spare minute of her time there since. Well—she would catch Papa’s cold for a certainty, and then she would see! But Laura did not catch Gran’papa’s cold. It was not one of his usual colds, the angry, vigorous, resentful colds of his healthy old age, but a feverish indisposition, a certain fading and shrinking of body that accompanied a glittering, fitful, mental activity. The change in him was so marked, so swift, that at the end of the week Laura looked back to the Gran’papa of last Sunday as to a memory, as to a stranger. He would not go to bed, but sat crouched over the fire in the armchair that Laura had never before realized was so much too big for Gran’papa. She, when she could, sat with him, eternally knitting socks for the army that must always be to her but a multiplication of Justin, thinking of him and herself, and now, with new, bewildered thoughts, of Gran’papa. She had been touched, almost beyond her strength, by that thought of his for her—by the sight of the paper in Gran’papa’s shaking hand, handed to her with a gesture that he could not, even then, prevent from being gingerly. The knowledge that he had guessed something, that he had been aware of the anxiety that showed itself in her feverish lust for news, that he, behind his reserves and absorptions, had watched her, felt for her—made her want to cry. She could be Spartan, but of necessity, not from choice. There was nothing of the Emily Brontë in her nature: she took as generously as she gave. She had strength and pride, but though she did without it, she never pretended that sympathy would not have been sweet. In those days, though she did not know it, though she had nearly forgotten her, she wanted her mother. Gran’papa’s look at her as she came to him that Sunday, his silence, his awkward thrust of the rag he abhorred into her hand, did more than touch her—it strengthened her. She, to whom kith and kin had never meant much, had felt for the first time the comfort of the blood-tie, of the clan-love that is independent of all accidents of personality or desert. Gran’papa might not love Laura, but she realized at last how faithfully he loved his granddaughter.