This change of life worked a great change in every way in the boy. He was removed altogether from his own childish beginnings and all those scenes which had impressed themselves on his mind in the mists of early recollection. He had become the son of his grandfather and grandmother, who were old, and comfortable, and quiet, and never stepped beyond their routine or did differently to-day from what they had done yesterday. The vision of his father had gone altogether from his life, and his mother was as much or even more lost, for her aspect was completely changed to him. She had ceased to be his mother and become Emily, which was the name by which he always heard her called, a person found fault with sometimes, discussed and criticised, about whom there were shakings of the head between the grandparents, complaints that she liked her own will, and would have her own way. By dint of hearing her spoken of like this for years, and hearing very little of her in any other way, John came to have a sort of impression that she was only an elder sister, whom he too might call Emily, who had been very long away from home, and who had departed from all their traditions. In his mind he came to feel himself a sort of little uncle to Susie, which, of course, being grandmamma’s son, was what he would naturally be. He fell into all the old people’s ways of thinking, feeling sorry in a disapproving way that Emily and her daughter never came to see them, yet feeling this more as a fault in them than as anything that told upon himself. Children and old people are more near to each other than the old and the middle-aged, and Johnnie made a far better child than Emily, who herself was older than her father and mother. He redressed the balance, and by slipping, as it were, a generation, set them right again in their parental place. But the effect upon him was very confusing. Emily did not write very often, and scarcely at all to the boy. When she did send him a letter to himself at Christmas, or on his birthday, it was without any appreciation of the fact that Johnnie had grown into John, and was no longer a child: and her letters to the old people were bulletins of life rather than familiar letters. She told them what she was doing, and how Susie was getting on, and what sort of weather it was--hot or cold--and that she was quite well in health, or else had little ailments, of which she hoped soon to be well: but there was nothing in these epistles to interest the boy. As a matter of fact he was much disposed in his heart to the conclusion that Emily was not sympathetic, and was fond of having her own way. His way was that of the elder world, and was quite different from hers: and for years he had ceased to wonder why it was that the letters were addressed to Mrs. Sandford, and that he too bore that name.