Esther slipped by her, and went to the bed where grandmother was lying propped on pillows, an exceedingly small old woman who was even to life-long friends an enigma presumably without an answer. She had the remote air of hating her state of age, which did not seem a natural necessity but a unique calamity, a trap sprung on her and, after the nature of traps, most unexpectedly. When she was young she had believed the old walked into the trap deliberately because it was provided on a path they were tired of. But she wasn't tired, and yet the trap had clutched her. She had a small face beautifully wrought upon by lines, as if she had given a cunning artificer the preparation of a mask she was paying dearly for and yet didn't prize at all. An old-fashioned nightcap with a frill covered her head, and she had tied herself so tightly into it that he must be a bold adventurer who would get at the thoughts inside. Her little hands were shaded by fine frills. She looked, on the whole, like a disenchanted lingerer in the living world, a useless creature for whom fostering had done so much that you might ask: "What is this illustration of a clean old woman? What is it for? What does it teach?" Esther, with her telegram, stood beside the bed. "Grandmother," said she, in the perfect tone she used toward her, clear and not too loud, "Aunt Patricia Beattie is coming." Grandmother lifted large black eyes dulled by the broken surface of age, to Esther's face. There was no envy in the gaze but wonder chiefly. "Is that youth?" the eyes inquired. "Useless, not especially admirable--but curious." Esther, waiting there for recognition, felt the discomfort grandmother always seemed to stir into her mood. Her rose-touched skin was a little more suffused, though not beyond a furtherance of beauty. "Aunt Patricia is coming," she repeated. "When I heard from her last she was in Poland." "Her name is Martha," said grandmother. "Don't let her come in here." She had a surprising voice, of a barbaric quality, the ring of metal. Hearing it you were mentally translated for an instant, and thought of far-off, palm-girt islands and savages beating strange instruments and chanting to them uncouth syllables. "Rhoda Knox, don't let her get up here." "How can I keep her out?" asked Esther. "You'll have to see her. I can't live down there alone with her. I couldn't make her happy." A satirical light shivered across grandmother's eyes. "Where is your husband?" she inquired. "Here?" "Here?" repeated Esther. "In this house?" "Yes." "He isn't coming here. It would be very painful for him."