The reason of it was not in any great measure regard for her father. He lived too much apart from the din of daily events for their remote effect on him to be much present to the preoccupied mind of youth. The change came about through a growing, albeit unwilling, admiration and sense of friendship for her grandmother. She was entertaining, this old lady, in spite of her terrible faults. One was never dull with her. She told delightful stories, and she laughed at yours when they were good. Indeed, no matter how abandoned had been your conduct, if you could make her laugh you were saved. It was not in child-nature not to lay traps for that pardoning gleam of the fierce eye, that involuntary twitching of the judicial mouth. An exchange of anecdotes tends inevitably to a good understanding. But more than by any other means, perhaps, the perverse school-girl and the autocratic old woman were brought together by a mutual recognition of a common regard for justice. When Val found out that her grandmother was not as arbitrary as she had supposed, the battle was half over. Mrs. Gano had been overheard advising her son, "Don't try to coerce Val. If you can convince that child's reason you can do what you like with her, but you can't drive her an inch." The girl felt that she was being understood. Perhaps the truth was they were both changing, both developing, the old no less than the young. Certain it is they became better and better friends, and had surprisingly much in common. Still, Val had struggled so long against owning to herself that any good could come out of this Nazareth, that it was some time before a belated sense of fairness led her to avow guardedly to her old fellow-sufferer her new view of the autocrat. She must try, little by little, to convince her father that, contrary to appearance, and despite many sore experiences, his mother had her good points. "Gran'ma's been real kind to me and Julia to-day." "Has she?" "Julia thinks she's awfully nice." This rather in the tone of "there's no accounting for tastes." "Yes," said her father, not seeming enough impressed. "She says I may read _The H---- Family_ and all the Frederika Bremer books now that I've finished the _Waverleys_." "H'm! I never looked at them myself." "But do you know why she was so nice about _The H---- Family_?" It was one thing to do justice to her good deeds, but it was no use setting up a false ideal and pretending she was better than she was. "You see, we'd read all the horrid silly little Harry and Lucys and Sandford and Mertons and _Moral Tales_ and things, and I'd begun Bohn's _Wilhelm Meister_." "Oh, ho!" "I put down the book while I tied my shoe, and when I looked up she was putting it into the fire." He laughed. "But it wasn't _her_ book at all; I got it out of your room underneath the big Brande and Taylor's _Chemistry_. It had your name in it." "Yes"--reflectively--"I bought it on April 9, 1870." "Well, it's burnt now."