Mrs. Gano would have repelled indignantly the idea that her grandson's affection had anything to do with her spotless neatness; the sober distinction of her plain silk gowns, made before the war; her white lawn kerchiefs, rolling up from her V-shaped bodice, fold on fold, voluminous and soft about her neck; her full lawn undersleeves, that came so daintily out from the silk, and fastened with a silver shell button at the wrist, flowing out again in a fine ruffle, and falling over her hands. As to that most distinctive touch of all, the veil of plain white net that covered, and yet did not conceal, the thick silver hair massed about the high shell comb, one cannot help thinking that if she had quite realized its effectiveness, she would have considered it her duty to discard it. She always said she disliked caps as "would-be ornamental," and besides, she had "too much hair;" she "would be top-heavy in a cap." So she had adopted the white net veil, fastened just behind the heavy rings of hair on the temples with a pair of pearl and silver pins of curious old design, and the veil fell down to the shoulders behind, concealing the neck, masking a little the droop of the bowed back, and falling softly down each side of the strong old face, and dropping into her lap. The child sat with the open book in his hand, but with big eyes roving, reading as well as he could the more obscure but not less interesting story incarnate in the great red chair, getting the details by heart in the observant way of children. "What time do you usually go to bed?" she asked, presently, turning a page. "When I feel sleepy." "H'm! I think eight o'clock is a good time." "It's pretty early," he said, wistfully. "Your father, when he was your age, always went to bed at eight." "Oh!" "Aunt Jerusha will come presently and take you up-stairs." "_Aunt_ Jerusha!" He dropped the _Moral Tales_ on the floor. The terrifying black woman was his aunt! "Oh, oh! that's not the way to treat books. The Ganos are always very careful of their books." Ethan recovered the volume hurriedly, a prey to conflicting agitations. "Where's Aunt Valeria?" he said, presently. "Up in the blue room"--Mrs. Gano glanced overhead, and then looked out severely into space over her gold spectacles, adding, meditatively, "making herself ill with writing." "Oh, if she's writing letters, I s'pose I mustn't 'sturb her." "H'm! she's not writing letters." "What is she writing?" "Verses, most probably." "Poetry verses?" "Well, _verses_, at any rate," she said, a little grimly. It was noticed that during Valeria's lifetime Mrs. Gano never spoke of her daughter's work except as "verses;" after her death it was all "poetry." "It's high time she was interrupted. Go up-stairs, child," she said, turning to Ethan, "and knock at the door next your own, and say I sent you."