I may as well mention at once that my uncle called her _grannie_ in his own right and not in mine, for she was in truth my great-grandmother. ‘Pretty well, David, I thank you; but much too long out of my grave,’ answered grannie; in no sepulchral tones, however, for her voice, although weak and uneven, had a sound in it like that of one of the upper strings of a violin. The plaintiveness of it touched me, and I crept near her--nearer than, I believe, I had ever yet gone of my own will--and laid my hand upon hers. I withdrew it instantly, for there was something in the touch that made me--not shudder, exactly--but creep. Her hand was smooth and soft, and warm too, only somehow the skin of it seemed dead. With a quicker movement than belonged to her years, she caught hold of mine, which she kept in one of her hands, while she stroked it with the other. My slight repugnance vanished for the time, and I looked up in her face, grateful for a tenderness which was altogether new to me. ‘What makes you so long out of your grave, grannie?’ I asked. ‘They won’t let me into it, my dear.’ ‘Who won’t let you, grannie?’ ‘My own grandson there, and the woman down the stair.’ ‘But you don’t really want to go--do you, grannie?’ ‘I do want to go, Willie. I ought to have been there long ago. I am very old; so old that I’ve forgotten how old I am. How old am I?’ she asked, looking up at my uncle. ‘Nearly ninety-five, grannie; and the older you get before you go the better we shall be pleased, as you know very well.’ ‘There! I told you,’ she said with a smile, not all of pleasure, as she turned her head towards me. ‘They won’t let me go. I want to go to my grave, and they won’t let me! Is that an age at which to keep a poor woman from her grave?’ ‘But it’s not a nice place, is it, grannie?’ I asked, with the vaguest ideas of what _the grave_ meant. ‘I think somebody told me it was in the churchyard.’ But neither did I know with any clearness what the church itself meant, for we were a long way from church, and I had never been there yet. ‘Yes, it is in the churchyard, my dear.’ ‘Is it a house?’ I asked. ‘Yes, a little house; just big enough for one.’ ‘I shouldn’t like that.’ ‘Oh yes, you would.’ ‘Is it a nice place, then?’ ‘Yes, the nicest place in the world, when you get to be so old as I am. If they would only let me die!’ ‘Die, grannie!’ I exclaimed. My notions of death as yet were derived only from the fowls brought from the farm, with their necks hanging down long and limp, and their heads wagging hither and thither. ‘Come, grannie, you mustn’t frighten our little man,’ interposed my uncle, looking kindly at us both.