He was still smiling and stroking his ragged beard. "I hope she isn't going to keep the big bookcases locked up forever," sighed Val. "She will never like to see Valeria's books knocking about." "Gracious, no! She _refused_ to lend Mrs. Otway _Helen Whitman's Poems_, because she said it had Poe's notes in it; but I knew it wasn't a bit on account of Poe. It had some of _Aunt Valeria's_ notes in it, and that was why she wouldn't let it go out o' the house. I was awfully ashamed, and Mrs. Otway looked so snubbed." And still he only smiled. "She isn't a bit like other people, but sometimes I'm not sorry." "Never be sorry, my child. Never be so dull as not to realize that the woman who stands at the head of our line gives us our best title to honor--and to hope." Val opened astonished eyes. Her father was indeed forgiving--fantastically generous. He was gazing off into space now, and his look was strangely lighted. "She belongs to the heroic age," he said, with a kind of worship in his face. "She was born before we began to split hairs, and have nerves instead of nerve." Val couldn't stand it. Her father was worth fifty grandmothers. "I should imagine she _thought_ she was a pretty fine sort of person." "She hasn't a notion how utterly she stands alone. I've gone up and down the world for over forty years, and never seen her equal. Her _equal_?" He laughed derisively, and began to talk of her as he might have talked of Semiramis or Boadicea, only more vividly. It was very annoying. _He_ had come to care about her too, "only more so." But the real blow fell when it came out that he had felt like this all along. Appreciation, fairness were all very well, but this besotted heroine-worship was a little pitiable. All these years that Val had been so sure he was silently nursing his injuries and modestly contemplating his own superiority, he had been on the side of the oppressor. "H'm!" mused Val. "I s'pose she was different, then, to her _own_ children." "Ah yes; I've often observed the softening of late years." "The _what_?" "The growing tolerance, the forbearance with my children, that she never showed Valeria and me." Val's imagination reeled at the thought of what her grandmother could have been like when she was more intolerant than she was to-day. And it was all forgotten and forgiven! Here he was now leaving glittering generalities, and telling story after story of his mother's courage and her wisdom. She did seem to have been a useful kind of parent, and it appeared she had been more generous in money matters than Val had thought. "And what she did that time she has always done. She never failed anybody who depended on her. I always think of her when I read the lines: "'Oh iron nerve to true occasion true, ... that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!' Try to understand your grandmother, my child," he wound up; "she is the Pallas Athene of our line."