The grandson looked at the grandmother in silence, paying little heed to what she was saying of the Frenchman. He was wondering why she said "your grandfather" instead of saying "my husband." He had already noted that she invariably said "your father" instead of saying "my son." He knew little of women's ways, having lost his mother before he could remember, so that his life had been mostly among men, and he knew nothing whatever of his grandmother. Yet he felt, nevertheless, that a wife and mother who had loved her husband and her son would not speak of them to her grandson as "your grandfather" and "your father," as his grandmother did. He had also a curious, half-amused, half-indignant feeling that her doing so was intended to make him feel somehow responsible for something which she disliked, and did not wish to assume responsibility for herself. "I never thought of asking your grandfather where he found him," old lady Gordon went on indifferently. "Most likely it was in New Orleans. The few foreigners in this country mostly came from there. Your grandfather used to go there pretty often with flatboat-loads of horses. But it doesn't matter where Beauchamp came from in the first place. He's mighty useful to me now, wherever it was. I really don't see how I could get along without him. He is a faithful, honest, industrious little soul. Of course that bat in his belfry flies out now and then--as you saw and heard. I try to remember it, but I forget sometimes. And how could a body guard against such an unheard-of thing as that was?" She laughed lazily, fanning herself with the turkey-wing, and rocking slowly and heavily. "He isn't a bit luny about anything else, and he is just as useful to me as if he didn't believe he was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte. I don't care if he thinks he's Julius Caesar himself. What's the odds--since it never interferes with his work? And his wife's a treasure too, in a different way. There's nothing French or flighty about her. She belongs around here--somewhere in the Pennyroyal Region. I don't know or remember where he picked her up. She is a great, slow-witted, homely, slab-sided drudge, almost twice his size. And such a worker! She never turns her head when he calls her the 'Empress Maria.' She just goes straight along, hoeing the garden and making butter. But--all the same--she thinks the sun rises and sets in him." The young man laughed. "Fine! And he no doubt thinks she hung the moon." His grandmother looked at him more attentively than she had done hitherto. She had never been thrown with men of quick mind, and was not accustomed to such ready response. She liked quickness of perception as she liked all bright and pleasant things; and she disliked slowness of understanding as she disliked everything tiresome--like the sybarite that she was.