“Stop, Veronica,” I called; “am I pretty?” She turned back.  “Everybody in Surrey says so; and everybody says I am not.”  And she banged the door against me.

She did not come to Barmouth again.  She was ill in the winter, and, father told me, queerer than ever, and more trouble.  The summer passed, and I had no particular torment, except Miss Black’s reference to composition.  I could not do justice to the themes she gave us, not having the books from which she took them at command, and betrayed an ignorance which excited her utmost contempt, on “The Scenery of Singapore,” “The Habits of the Hottentots,” and “The Relative Merits of Homer and Virgil.”

In October Sally and Ruth Aiken came for the fall sewing.  They had farmed it all summer, they said, and were tanned so deep a hue that their faces bore no small resemblance to ham.  Ruth brought me some apples in an ochre-colored bag, and Sally eyed me with her old severity.  As they took their accustomed seats at the table, I thought they had swallowed the interval of time which had gone by since they left, so precisely the same was the moment of their leaving and that of their coming back.  I knew grand’ther no better than when I saw him first.  He was sociable to those who visited the house, but never with those abiding in his family.  Me he never noticed, except when I ate less than usual; then he peered into my face, and said, “What ails you?” We had the benefit of his taciturn presence continually, for he rarely went out; and although he did not interfere with Aunt Mercy’s work, he supervised it, weighed and measured every article that was used, and kept the cellar and garden in perfect order.

It was approaching the season of killing the pig, and he conferred often with Aunt Mercy on the subject.  The weather was watched, and the pig poked daily, in the hope that the fat was thickening on his ribs.  When the day of his destiny arrived, there was almost confusion in the house, and for a week after, of evenings, grand’ther went about with a lantern, and was not himself till a new occupant was obtained for the vacant pen, and all his idiosyncracies revealed and understood.

“Grand’ther,” I asked, “will the beautiful pigeons that live in the pig’s roof like the horrid new pig?”

“Yes,” he answered, briskly rubbing his hands, “but they eat the pig’s corn; and I can’t afford that; I shall have to shoot them, I guess.”

“Oh, don’t, grand’ther.”

“I will this very day.  Where’s the gun, Mercy?”

In an hour the pigeons were shot, except two which had flown away.

“Why did you ask him not to shoot the pigeons?” said Aunt Mercy.  “If you had said nothing, he would not have done, it.”

“He is a disagreeable relation,” I answered, “and I am glad he is a tailor.”

Aunt Mercy reproved me; but the loss of the pigeons vexed her.  Perhaps grand’ther thought so, for that night he asked after her geraniums, and told her that a gardener had promised him some fine slips for her.  She looked pleased, but did not thank him.  There was already a beautiful stand of flowers in the middle room, which was odorous the year round with their perfume.