The chair was all Zeb claimed. There was no more rock to it than to a dray sledge. From the chair his eyes flew to the crayon portraits. “Look at them! Look at Marm--then look at Gram. Why, there was nary a thing Gram couldn’t do, for all her crippled-upness. Bake a pie, fry a batch o’ doughnuts, clean up the butt’ry. But Marm seems like she was born fretty and tired. Made ye tired jest to watch her travel from the sink to the cook stove. She’d handle a batch o’ biscuits like she never expected to live to see ’em baked. Jes’ lookin’ at ’em, can’ ye make out a difference?” I did and I could. In spite of everything the artist had done to obliterate all human expression he had mastered the single point of difference. One face sagged utterly, the other looked out with sharp alert eyes on a world that interested her immensely. There was a grim humour about the mouth, and a firmness that spoke a challenge even at the end of a century. “I tell ye,” Zeb’s eulogy was gathering momentum. “We boys set a terrible store by Gram. She was cuter and smarter tied to that chair than Marm was on two good legs--hands to match ’em. Golly! How sick boys git bein’ whined at. Didn’t make no odds what we done--good or bad--Marm al’ays whined, but Gram--she stood by like she’d been a boy herself. She’d beg us off hoein’ fer circus and fair days and slip us dimes for this or that. Cal’ate she’s slipped us enough nickels and dimes to stretch clean to the upper pasture. Pasture! Golly! When we was up thar, hot days, hayin’, she’d al’ays mix us a pitcher o’ somethin’ cool--cream o’ tartar water or lemon and m’lasses. When she had it ready she’d take a stick and tick-tack on the wind’y. She could whistle, too; whistle through them crooked fingers o’ hern like a yaller-hammer. She’d whistle whenever she wanted to be fetched anywhars; then one of us boys would come runnin’ and heave her to wheresomever she aimed to go--kitchen to butt’ry--butt’ry to settin’ room--settin’ room to shed.” Zeb stopped here and illustrated. He put two of his crooked fingers to his mouth and shrilled out a thin, wailing note as eery as a banshee’s. “That’s the way she done it,” he continued. “And Marm would fuss and fret and say she didn’t see why the Lord ’lowed a little crippled-up body like Gram’s to stay so chuck full o’ spunk. Some days she git sort o’ vengeful, Marm would, and tell Gram she’d better quiet down decent, or more’n likely she’d never rest quiet in her grave after she died.” III