She was still looking intently ahead to make her vision alive.

“What a time of years, and how different!  Sixty years ago—­why, it seems farther back than Noah’s ark.  The log cabins in the little clearings, and people marrying when they wanted to—­always early, and working hard and raising big families.  I was the only girl, but I had nine brothers.  And Jim, your father’s father, my dear, I remember the very moment he began to take notice of me, coming out of the log church one Sabbath.  He only looked at me, that was all, and I had to pretend I didn’t know.  Then he came nights and sat in front of the big open fire, with all of us, at first.  But after a little, the others would climb up the ladder to the loft and leave us, and we’d maybe eat a mince pie that I’d made—­I was a good cook at sixteen—­and there would be a pitcher of cider, and outside, the wind would be driving the snow against the tiny windowpanes—­I can hear that sound now, and the sputtering of the backlog, and Jim—­oh, well!” She waved the scene back.

“When we were married, Jim had his eighty acres all cleared, a yoke of nice fat steers, a cow, two pigs, and a couple of sheep; not much, but it seemed enough then.  The furniture was home-made, the table-ware was tin plates and pewter spoons and horn-handled knives, and a set of real china that Pa and Ma gave us—­that was for company—­and a feather-bed and patch-work quilts I’d made, and a long-barrelled rifle, and the best coon-dog, Jim said, in the whole of York State.  Oh, well!”

Bean became aware that the old lady had grasped his hand, and he divined that she was also holding a hand of the flapper.

“And my! such excitement you never did see when little Jim came!  We began to save right off to send him to a good seminary.  We were going to make a preacher out of him; and see the way he’s turned out!  Lord, what would his father make of this place and our little Jim, if he was to come back?

“I lost him before he got to see many changes in the world.  I remember we did go to a party in Fredonia one time, where a woman from Buffalo wore a low-necked gown, and Jim never got over it.  He swore to the day of his death that any woman who’d wear ‘a dug-out dress’ was a hussy.  He didn’t know what the world could be coming to, when they allowed such goings-on.  Poor Jim!  I was still young when he went, and of course—­but I couldn’t.  I’d had my man and I’d had my baby, and somehow I was through.  I wanted to learn more about the world, and little Jim was growing up and had a nice situation in the store at Fredonia, working early and late, sleeping under the counter, and saving his fifty dollars clear every year.  I knew he’d always provide for me—­Dear me! how I run on!  Where was I?”

Bean’s hand was released, and Grandma rose to her feet, turning to look down upon them.

“I forgot what I started to say, but maybe it was this, that the world hasn’t changed so much as folks often think.  I get to watching young people sometimes—­it seems as if they were like the young people in my day, and I think any young man that’s steady and decent and has a good situation—­what I mean is this, that he—­well, it depends on the girl, as it always did.”