Middletown transcript. [volume] (Middletown, Del.) 1868-current, 1905-09-02
THAT GRANDMOTHER OF OURS
BY MRS. CHARLES TERRY COLLINS

Patty's, mothers first grand
child, was three months old, anc
she had not yet bestirred herself
to take short nights journey
that separated her from it
What was more, she showed the
strangest reluctance about doing
so.
What the trouble was Alar
and I puzzled our brains to make
out. Mother intrenched herself
behind the most frivolous and
transparent excuses.
"Woman !" Alan would say
putting his big hand under hel
chin and looking squarely into
her eyes, "you are hedging.
"Woman" is Alan's pet name fol
her: one of them, at least.
She would be a great inconyen'
ence to Patty just now, with all
her cares, was one of these ex,
cuses. Patty had only the gen.
eral housemaid and the elderly
nurse-we must remember-it
was so sweet of her to come right
down to Roberts means when
she had had so much before, her
own maid and everything. Poor
Robert He was mostly pros
poets at present, it must be ad-
mitted.
She was not ready, either, as
to her gowns, was another it
was between the seasons. Patty
and her relatives were always so
perfectly turned out, to the last
woman of them she must hold
her own with them for Roberts
sake.
When we brushed these ex-
cuses aside, like the chaff that
they were, she took refuge in
weightier ones.
1t would be too great respon-
sibility to be left alone at night
in that remote spot, with Patty
and the baby, as she should be if
Robert were called away. He
might be, at any moment.
There were those lonely woods at
the back, and all that silver-the
wedding silver-in the safe, and
Terence Mulvaney Robert S new
Airedale, so called because with
the best of intentions he is al
ways going wrong) only a puppy,
and the general housemaid SO
young, and the nurse so old.
=
A certain vivid memory from
out Alan's and my childhood made
this excuse particularly unten-
able. In those bygone days it
was that mother wakened one
night to see burglar stealing
down the stairs, and was up and
after him with a pistol before one
could say Jack Robinson. She
hit him in the back, and when he
staggered but did not drop she
popped at him again-through
sheer madness of the fray and
thirst for gore-and kept on pop
ping, all the way down the stairs
and cut the door and down the
driveway, till he fell into his
accomplice's arms and was borne
away. What he thought was
after him Heaven only knows.
Alan says that the way mother
spat fire and sprinted, the regu-
lar dime-novel way, was an awful
lesson for growing boy.
The day after the burglary
two stilted gentlewomen of her
acquaintance, discussing the oc.
currence with her, expressed |
their panied surprise that she
should have appeared before a |
burglar in her nightgown.
''Oh, I didn't. l appeared be-
hind, was mothers repartee. !
It was when we called this |
episode to mind that she gave up
excusing herself on that score
and fell back upon her incompe-
tence in the matter of baby tend.
ing.
She should be helpless, and
worse than helpless, she knew.
The theories concerning their
management had changed radi-
cally in the last decade. She was
a back number, and must recog-
nize herself as such.
1t was a stbottled" baby, any
way. l am convinced that
mother meant to say "bottle"
she was so taken up with the sub
ject- matter of her discourse that
final ending lost llsigniicance to
her. She had never had any ex-
perience with bottles. The care
Of them, from all she had heard,
was something a mere mortal
ought not to undertake. She
should be careless. She should
olson the baby; ptomaine poi