"I believe," I went on, "she has a grandmother, who probably has grown accustomed to the place, and is unwilling to leave it." She looked puzzled for a moment, then burst into a merry laugh. "I see," she exclaimed. "How stupid I am! You have heard some of the people in the house talk about _grannie_: that's me! I am known in the house as grannie, and have been for a good many years now--I can hardly, without thinking, tell for how many." Again she laughed heartily, and my father and I shared her merriment. "How many grandchildren have you then, pray, Miss Clare?" "Let me see." She thought for a minute. "I could easily tell you if it were only the people in this house I had to reckon up. They are about five and thirty; but unfortunately the name has been caught up in the neighboring houses, and I am very sorry that in consequence I cannot with certainty say how many grandchildren I have. I think I know them all, however; and I fancy that is more than many an English grandmother, with children in America, India, and Australia, can say for herself." Certainly she was not older than I was; and while hearing her merry laugh, and seeing her young face overflowed with smiles, which appeared to come sparkling out of her eyes as out of two well-springs, one could not help feeling puzzled how, even in the farthest-off jest, she could have got the name of grannie. But I could at the same time, recall expressions of her countenance which would much better agree with the name than that which now shone from it. "Would you like to hear," she said, when our merriment had a little subsided, "how I have so easily arrived at the honorable name of grannie,--at least all I know about it?" "I should be delighted," said my father. "You don't know what you are pledging yourself to when you say so," she rejoined, again laughing. "You will have to hear the whole of my story from the beginning." "Again I say I shall be delighted," returned my father, confident that her history could be the source of nothing but pleasure to him. CHAPTER XIX. HER STORY. Thereupon Miss Clare began. I do not pretend to give her very words, but I must tell her story as if she were telling it herself. I shall be as true as I can to the facts, and hope to catch something of the tone of the narrator as I go on.