She laughed feebly, but nevertheless with audible asperity, interrupting his rather stumbling reassurances. “‘Happy memories!’ Young people are always talking about ‘happy memories’; and they think old people ‘live in their happy memories.’ I advise you not to look forward to spending your old age in that way! There’s no such thing, young man.” “No such thing as a happy memory?” “Not when you’re as old as I am,” she said. “You can only have a happy memory of something when you can look forward to something of the same kind happening again; but I can’t look forward to anything. Yet I still want to hang on!” Harlan laughed gently. “Then doesn’t that prove you do look forward to something, grandma?” “No,” she said. “It only proves I still have a little curiosity. I’d like to live twenty years just to prove I’m right about how this baby’s going to turn out.” The implication of her tone was grim with conviction—clearly she spoke of a baby who could not turn out well—and Harlan was amused by his own perception of a little drama: his grandmother, clinging with difficulty to one extreme edge of life and prophesying only black doom for this new person who had just crawled up into life over the opposite extreme edge. “I’m sorry you feel so gloomy about that baby, grandma. I’m rather pleased, myself, to be an uncle, and so far I haven’t been worrying about his future. Don’t you think there’s a chance for him?” “Not with such a mother and father,” the old lady promptly replied. “Dan oughtn’t to have mixed with such a stock as that painted-up little photograph girl.” Harlan protested a little; coming to Lena’s defense at least in this detail. “But I understand that the particular foible of the McMillan family is the magnificence of their stock, as you call it, grandma. It seems they’re so proud of it they don’t think of much else.” “Yes; that’s always a sign a stock’s petered out. When people _put_ a lot on what their folks used to do, it always means they haven’t got gimp enough left to do anything themselves. The minute I laid eyes on her picture I knew she came from a no-account stock; and when your mother gave her that reception everybody in town could tell right off what she was. Painted! _That_ tells the story!” Again Harlan protested on behalf of his sister-in-law. “Oh, I shouldn’t make too much of that, grandma. A little rouge now and then——” “‘A little rouge!’” the old lady echoed satirically. “She was plastered with it! That doesn’t make any difference though, because a woman that uses it at all is a bad woman and wants the men to know it.” “Oh, no, no!” “It’s so,” the old lady cried as fiercely as her enfeebled voice permitted. “It’s the truth, and you’ll live to see I’m right. I don’t want you to forget then that I told you so. You remember it, Harlan.” “Yes, grandma,” he said placatively. “I will if——”