Rose MacLeod

								

woman--well, like me. Maybe it was in the blood to want a woman like me.
Then this boy and the singer had two sons--one of them clever. Peter
Grant, you know. I suppose he's a genius, if there are such. The other
has--a deformity."
"I know," he nodded. "You wrote me."
"I didn't write you all. He wasn't born with it. He was a splendid boy,
but when he had the accident the mother turned against him. She couldn't
help it. I see how it was, Billy. The pride of life, that's what it
is--the pride of life."
"Is he dwarfed?"
"Heavens! he was meant for a giant, rather. He has great strength.
Somehow he impresses you. But it's the grandmother that built him up,
body and brain. Now he's a man grown, and she's made him. Don't you see,
Billy? she's struck home every time."
"Is she religious?"
"Yes, she is. She prays." Her voice fell, with the word. She looked at
him searchingly, as if he might understand better than she did the
potency of that communion.
"She's a Churchwoman, I suppose."
"No, no. She only believes things--and prays. She told me one day
Osmond--he's the deformed one--he couldn't have lived if she hadn't
prayed."
"That he would be better?"
"No, she was quite explicit about that. Only that they would be taught
how to deal with it--his trouble. To do it, she said, as God wished they
should. Billy, it's marvelous."
"Well, dear child," said Billy, "you can pray, too."
Her old face grew pinched in its denial.
"No," she answered sadly, "no. It wouldn't rise above the ceiling. What
I mean is, Billy, that all our lives we're opening gates into different
roads. Bessie Grant opened the right gate. She's got into a level field
and she's at home there. But I shouldn't be. I only go and climb up and
look over the bars. And I go stumbling along, hit or miss, and I never
get anywhere."
He was perplexed. He frowned a little.
"Where do you want to get, Florrie?" he asked at length.
She smiled into his face engagingly.
"I don't know, Billy. Only where things don't bore me; where they are
worth while."
"But they always get to bore us--" he paused and she took him up.
"You mean I'm bored because I am an old woman. I should say so, too, but
then I look at that other woman and I know it isn't so. No, Billy, I
took the wrong road."
Billy looked at her a long time searchingly.
"Well," he said at last, "what can we do about it? I mean, besides
writing fake memoirs and then going ag'in our best friends when they beg
us to own up?"
She put the question by, as if it could not possibly be considered, and
yet as if it made another merry chapter to her jest. Billy had gathered
his consolatory forces for another leap.
"Florrie," said he, "come back to London with me."
"My dear child!"
"You marry me, Florrie. I asked you fifty odd years ago. I could give
you a good sober sort of establishment, a salon of a sort. I know
everybody in arts and letters. Come on, Florrie."