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II

GRANDMOTHER SPEAKS

“And so you’ve pretty nearly all got telephones now, down in the Bay, an’ can hear folks talk in Town? Well, well! An’ Doubleday’s buildin’ another side on to his store—is he, now? little Johnny Doubleday, with his pants made out of a sack, that used to come a-tormentin’ me for to give him a bite o’ cold porridge, or a spud, in the days when provisions was run short, an’ the whaleboats weather-stayed. . . . Johnny, eh? Times change, so they do! What’s that about the wharf? A new one already? Nonsense, girl! What, further out, you say, so bigger boats can come? Well, my word! I call that clear extravagance. Why, in them days all the wharf we had was the men’s shoulders, an’ they waist-deep in the sea. . . .

“You like to hear tell o’ them days? Do you, now? Well, an’ I’m sure I like to talk of ’em. Get the kettle, an’ put it on to boil, against your mother comes back; an’ lay the tea-things too—then we can talk uninterrupted. . . . Them days, eh! when

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