Nay, I have not come to that yet. And then, at times, we should hear a voice below--a stern, deep voice, or a peal of loud laughter--and in an instant the light and the joy would die out of the tender eyes of that gracious vision, and instead would come a frightened look like that of a hunted hare, and commonly she would rise suddenly, and put down the babe, and hasten away, as if she had been indulging in some forbidden pleasure, and was afraid of being caught. I can remember wishing that the loud laugh and the stern angry voice would go away, and never come back, but that the gracious vision would stay always with us, and not only pay us a rare visit. Ay, and I can remember wishing that she would take _me_ on that velvet lap, and let me nestle into her soft arms, and dare to lay my little head on her warm bosom. I think she would have done it, if she had known! I used to feel in those days like a little chicken hardly feathered, and longed to be under the soft brooding wings of the hen. The memory of it hath caused me to pet my Jack and Joan a deal more than I should without it. Then, sometimes, we had a visit from a very different sort of guest. That was an old lady--about a hundred and fifty, I used to fancy her-- dressed in velvet full as costly, but how differently she wore it! She never took us on her lap--not she, indeed! We used to have to kneel and kiss her hand--and Roger whispered to me once that if he dared, he would bite it. This horrid old thing (who called herself our grandmother) used to be like a storm blowing through the house. She never was two minutes in the room before she began to scold somebody; and if she could not find reasonable fault with any body, that seemed to vex her more than anything else. Then she scolded us all in a lump together. "Dame Hilda, what an untidy chamber!"--she usually began in that way--"why don't you make these children put their playthings tidy? (Of course Dame Hilda did, at the end of the day; but how could we have playthings tidy while we were playing with them?) Meg, your hair is no better than a mop! Jack, how got you that rent in your sleeve? (I never knew Jack without a rent in some part of his clothes; I should not have thought it was Jack if he had come in whole garments.) Joan, how ungainly you sit! pluck yourself up this minute. Nym, take your elbows off the table. Maud, your chaucers [slippers] are down at heel. How dirty your hands are, Roger! go and wash them. Agnes, that wimple of yours is all awry; who pinned it up?" So she went on--rattle and scold, scold and rattle--as long as she stayed in the room. Jack, always the saucy one, asked her one day, when he was very little-- "Are you really Grandmother?" "Certes, child," said she, turning to look at him: "why?" "Because I wish you were somebody else!" _Ha, chetife_! did Jack forget that afternoon? I trow not.