GRAN’MA_ GRACIE.

T was Uncle George who called her ‘‘ Gran’ma” when she
was only six, and by the time she was seven everybody had
taken to the name, and she answered to it as a matter of
course.

Why did he call her so? Because she was such a prim,
staid, serious, little old-fashioned body, and consequently
her mother laughingly took to dressing her in an old-
fashioned way, so that at last, whether she was out in the
grounds, or round by the stables with Grant, in her figured
pink dress, red sash, long gloves, and sun-bonnet, looking after her pets, or
indoors of an evening, in her yellow brocade, muslin apron — with pockets, of

 

course, and quaint mob cap tied up with its ribbon — she always looked serious
and grandmotherly.

“It is her nature to,” Uncle George said, quoting from “Let dogs
delight ;” and when he laughed at her, Gran’ma used to look at him wonder-
ingly in the most quaint way, and then put her hand in his, and ask him to
take her for a walk.

Gran’ma lived in a roomy old house with a delightful garden, surrounded
by a very high red-brick wall that was covered in the spring with white blos-
soms, and in the autumn with peaches with red cheeks that laughed at her and
imitated hers; purple plums covered with bloom, and other plums that looked
like drops of gold among the green leaves; and these used to get so ripe and
juicy in the hot sun, that they would crack and peer out at her as if asking to
be eaten before they fell down and wasted their rich honey juice on the ground.
Then there were great lumbering looking pears which worried John, the gar-