“Jessie can’t abide Canadian children,” Dolly cut in, introducing that unpleasant person for the first time into the parlour. “Real nasty about ’em, she is. She couldn’t abide English children, either, if it comes to that, judging from what parents and such-like used to say about her when she taught school. But Canadian children, she says, are that uppish and wild there’s no doing anything with them. Like savages, you’d think they were, if you swallowed everything you heard from Jessie. Fine children to look at, she says, and healthy and all that; but that noisy and full of beans they fair make an English person tired.” Mattie had a horrid vision of a narrow and crowded house, with Kirkby and herself hemmed in by leaping, shouting children. She herself had once rather rejoiced in noise, though Kirkby had always hated it; but she was not so sure now that, after all these years of silence, she would not hate it, too. Luke had two other boys besides young Joe of the motor-mower, as well as a little girl just over a year old. He was fond of company, too, and was never so happy as when extending hospitality. Also he had that piano, she remembered with dismay, upon which both relatives and friends came eagerly to practise.... The homes of the younger children had nothing better to offer, for they, too, had growing families, and in even smaller houses. It was true that she and Kirkby would have their own home before so long, but she could not think of it now with her early happy passion. It seemed vulnerable to her now, and no longer a haven of contentment. For the first time in her life she saw the good stone walls of her English cottage as a frame for privacy and peace. “Jessie says Canadian children _aren’t_ children as we know ’em,” Dolly was saying blandly. “She says they grow up that fast it’s hard to remember they’ve ever even been babies. They’re grown folks, she says, before you can hardly turn round, same as that fine lad of Luke’s you said could manage a motor. I reckon you’ll be surprised, Mrs. Kirkby, by the time you get there, to find how they’ve all come on.” Mattie turned to the door with the same sharp movement with which she had endeavoured to rid herself of Jessie in the kitchen. That last stroke of hers, dealt through Dolly’s innocent tongue, had gone a great deal nearer home than she cared to realise. Like most grandmothers, she had thought of the children as children only, hardly believing that in the future they would be grown-up people. And especially she had thought of little Eric as remaining always little Eric.... Yet already, as she remembered, a year had passed since they had sent her his last picture. By the time she got out to him, she reflected grimly, he, too, might have risen to the dignity of the motor-mower!