The front room on the left, usually a bedroom, was used for a smoking room to-night; the dining-room door had been locked, but on the right two doors gave entrance to the long parlours, and here were older men, older women—­Mrs. Hawkes, big, energetic, perspiring all over her delighted face; Carrie David, wild with hospitable excitement; and Joe Hawkes, Senior, a lean little eager Irishman, quite in his glory to-night.  Throned on a sort of dais, in the front bay window, was Grandma Kelly, a little shrivelled beaming old woman, in a crumpled, shining, black satin gown.  Her hair was scanty, showing a wide bald parting, and to hear in all the confusion she was obliged occasionally to cup one hand behind her ear, but her snapping eyes were as bright as a monkey’s and her lips, over toothless gums, worked constantly with a rotary motion as she talked and laughed.  On each side of her were grouped other old ladies—­Mrs. Sark, Mrs. Mulkey, Mrs. Hansen, and Mrs. Mussoo—­her friends since the days, fifty years before, when they had crossed the plains in hooded wagons, and fought out their simple and heroic destinies on these strange western prairies.

They had borne children, comforting and caring for each other in the wilderness; they had talked of wolves and of Indians while trusting little hands caught their knees and ignorant little lips pulled at their breasts; they had known fire and flood and famine, crude offense and cruder punishment; they had seen the Indians and the buffalo go with the Missions and the sheep; they had followed the gold through its sensational rise to its sensational fall, and had held the wheat dubiously in their fingers before ever California’s dark soil knew it—­had wondered whether the first apple trees really might come to blossom and bear where the pines were cleared away.

And now, with the second and third generation, had come schools and post-offices, cable cars and gaslight; villages were cities; crossroads were towns.  At seventy-eight, Grandma Kelly was far from ready for her nunc dimittis.  Great days had been, no doubt, but great days were also to be.  Children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren kept the house swarming with life, and she could never have enough of it.

The air, never too fresh in the Hawkes’s house, was hot and charged with odours of cheap cologne, of powder, of human bodies, and of perspiration-soaked garments.  The very gaslights screamed above the din as if they found it contagious.  Large crayon portraits decorated the walls, that of the late Mr. Kelly having attached to its frame the sheaf of wheat that had lain on his coffin.  On the walls also were the large calendars of insurance companies, and one or two china plaques in plush frames.  A bead portiere hung between the two parlours, constantly clicking and catching as the guests swarmed to and fro.  All the chairs in the house had been set about the walls, and all were occupied.  A disk on the phonograph was duly revolving, in charge of a hysterical girl in blue silk and a flushed, humorous young man, but the music was almost unheard.