Grandma was out in the back yard hanging out a wash of patched work shirts and faded blue overalls. She said without surprise, “How do, Oliver,” and went right on finishing her task, while I watched with suppressed impatience. * * * * * Finally she picked up the empty clothes basket and led the way into the house. It was getting dusk, so she lit a kerosene lamp in the kitchen, where supper was simmering on the cast-iron range. “Grandma,” I fumbled, “I came down here--” “I can see that,” Grandma interrupted. “How do you like my new teeth, Oliver?” She grinned at me alarmingly. “Today’s my birthday--ninety-first or ninety-fourth or something like that, I forget--so I went to town and got me my new teeth. Pretty, eh, boy? Figure they ought to do me another ten or twelve years.” “Yes, Grandma,” I said, a little dazedly. She peered at me searchingly. “Well, Oliver? Speak up. You’ve got troubles written all over you.” I’d more or less rehearsed a persuasive speech, but sitting there in Grandma’s lamplit kitchen I felt as if the years had fallen away and I was like a little boy who had run away from home and come back sorry. In considerable disorder I poured out the story of how I’d gone out into the world and what I’d found it like. I covered all of it, my work and how little it amounted to compared to what it could have meant to me, and my experience with the way people were governed--even Alice. Above all, I told her how at every turning I had been lied to, and had heard people lie to one another, and seen them lie to themselves. Grandma nodded once or twice as she listened, which encouraged me. I remembered a scrap from the arguments I’d meant to muster: “Some philosopher once said that a lie is the Original Sin itself. Without it, all other crimes become impossible.” “So,” Grandma broke in, “you want the recipe for my lie soap.” “Uh ... yes, that’s right,” I admitted, “It’s the answer. Your ancestors and mine had no right to hold it back this long. Look, Grandma. The company I work for makes mouth washes, toothpastes, and the like. Millions of people use their products; and if a new ‘miracle ingredient’ were publicized the right way, other companies with more millions of customers would have to adopt it too.” I was counting on O’Brien. I’d explain it to him squarely, and somehow we’d manage to put it over. Grandma got up to stir a kettle. She took her time, while I held my breath. Finally she said, “I’m going to give you the recipe, Oliver--” My heart leaped. “--but not for ten or twenty years yet. Not until you’ve learned a mite of caution. I was your age once, myself, and I thought how nice it would be to make the world over tomorrow morning, and sit down and admire it tomorrow afternoon. Now I know better, and so will you.” I pleaded and argued, but it was no use. The old lady was adamant. Finally I fell glumly silent, while Grandma went about setting the table for supper.