White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1918-08-04
Larry's
Grandmother
By ANNE a
lCopyrieht, The Frank a. Mnnsey COD

va 80
as ~unauenched, at seventy as half a
century earlier. Out of "a network of
wrinkles they sparkled e~heerfully.
their blue luster heightened by the
parchment BROWNIES OF her weather.
beaten skin. And whenever they dwelt
upon her grandson, Larry Doherty.
they took "A new depth of Kindness Il
brightness.
She accounted herself a very lucky
woman, she was wont to tell her
neighbOrs. To be ure. her husband,
when they had been married only a
little over a year, had been killed in
an explosion in the old country but he
had left her Larry. her own son
Larry. the baby in arms, Who had
grown to be the best and most stall
wart of sons. She dwelt upon Larry's
memoir with great tenderness. for he
was only a memory these many years
now. The ship hat Was bearing him
TO America with his mother, his pretty
wife, and their rosy children, had
been wrecked on the Banks. Only one
of the lifeboafs had ever been heard
of again. That n a schooner from
Falmouth Cape had sighted and saved
and or il was old Mrs. Doherty with
her youngest grandchild, the baby
Larry. in her arms.
To some the chronicle would not
have seemed one of good fortune but
Mrs. Doherty translated calamity TO
blessing in her own fashion.
She was "A busy creature eyer after
the dreadful struggle of her early
years in the new country was past.
Her cabin ON the hill shone with a
cleanliness matching that of her New
England neighbors. She was Il dairy
woman of note. albei, but two COWS
composed her stock. She had a chick
en- yard screened from her small vege-
table patch and flower bed.
Larry, of course, had no conception
of the fact that She WAS II miracle
among grandinothers, hui he loved her
and depended upon her and imposed
upon her and took her as an every
day matter-until the Downings came
TO Falmouth Cape. Then his eyes We're
opened to the fact that his relative was
not as other women are. Myrtle Down
ing, blonde. given to giggling, and adj
hitting twenty-three years, enlightened
him.
my" she said. when their aequaint-
ance had progressed To the point of
personalities, faint your grandma
funnyf'
whats funny about herr demand
ed Larry, startled as If 1t had been
suggested to him that some fact of
nature was out OF the natural order.
"Now, who did you ever see dress
like that?' retorted Myrtle unanswer-
ably.
Whereupon Larry. recalling the diff
ference between the customary dress
of the community and the neat peas
ant garb which his grandmother had
never discarded. blushed for her. Later
he sought with gifts to beguile her into
a fashion which Miss Downing assured
him a correct
Mrs. Doherty was outwardly CRATE
full, though unbeguiled. To herself she
said shrewdly aud sadly:
"He nivef found out for himself
what | was wearin'. Mo- An It's If
tie he'd have cared for %annywan's
fellin' him, unless-unIess'-she sighed
heavily. well. l could have wished it
another - =
And the more Larry's grandmother
saw Of Miss Myrtle Downing. the more
she wished that Ii might have been an
other.
She was much alone In her cabin
during the days Of Larry.s wooing;
and the light Went out of her eyes as
il had never gone In all the years of
her labor and SORROW.
TITS not his leayin' me for another"
she used To assure some inward ac-
cuser. Lord save Us, didn't | see me
own do that. an have JOY Wild him !
But this girl--this baggage-what does
she know about carin'? He'll niyer be
happy wild her-her an her curis !"
Ii was Myrtle's obviously artificial
ringlets to which the old wofnan took
the most violent objection, making
them the s~capegoat, as IL were, for all
the girls shallowness and shains.
Once. In n desperate moment, shs
made the mistake that wiser ones than
she have made. She spoke contemptu'
ously of her grandson's sweetheart
she besought him to give Myrtle up
And she accomplished nothing but the
erecting of 4 Will of silence and an
tagonism between herself and the BIO,
for whom she lived.
And so IL finally came about that sh'
heard from the neighbors aud not from
himself OF his contemplated marriage
Mrs. Downing, IL was reported, had be