"I wasn't speaking about God," Harold objected. "I was asking about Grandmama. Does she hear Frida kicking the table, or does she only see her?" "At this solemn moment, Harold, when we should all of us be dumb with grief, you should not persist. Your poor grandmother would be pained to hear you being persistent like this." Harold seemed to think he had tricked his uncle into answering the question, for he relapsed into a satisfied silence; Edith's eyes flashed gladly through her tears to welcome the return of her husband's truant orthodoxy. All managed to abstain while they were eating from any more conspicuous intrusion of the flesh than was inevitable; but there was a painful scene after supper, because Frida insisted that she was frightened to sleep alone, and refused to be comforted by the offer of Viola for company. The terrible increase of Grandmama's powers of hearing and seeing might extend to new powers of locomotion in the middle of the night, in which case Viola would be no protection. "But Grandmama is in Heaven, darling," her mother urged. "I want to sleep with you. I'm frightened. I want to sleep with you," she wailed. "Laurence!" murmured Edith, appealingly. "Death is a great leveler," he intoned. Grateful to the chance of being able to make this observation, he agreed to occupy his daughter's room and thereby allow her to sleep with her mother. "You're looking sad, Bertram," John observed, kindly, to his favorite nephew. "You mustn't take this too much to heart." "No, Uncle John, I'm not. Only I keep wishing Grandmama had lived a little longer." "We all wish that, old man." "Yes, but I only meant a very little longer, so that I needn't have gone back for the first week of term."