them as she went about the house; but the most troublesome of all her
habits was a way she had of putting her pocket-book in some queer
place every night, or if ever she left home in the day-time, and then
utterly forgetting where she had secreted it from the burglars or
thieves she had all her life expected.

The house she lived in was her own, but Doctor White who had married
her daughter Maria, rented it of her, and the rent paid her board; she
had a thousand dollars a year beside, half of which she reserved for
her dress and her charities, keeping the other half for her Christmas
gifts to her children and grandchildren. There were ten of these last,
and the ten always needed something. Gerty White, the doctor's
daughter, was twelve years old; she had three brothers: Tom, John, and
Harry, all older than she was. Mrs. Rutledge, who had been Annie
Grant, was a widow with three daughters--Sylvia, Amelia, and Anne,
these latter two now out in society and always glad of new dresses,
gloves, bonnets, ribbons, lace, and the thousand small fineries girls
never have to their full satisfaction. There were Thomas Grant's two
girls of thirteen and fifteen, Rosamond and Kate, and his little boy
Hal, crippled in his babyhood so that he must always go on crutches,
but as bright and happy as Grandma herself, and her prime favorite.

Now it was Grandma's way to draw her money out of the bank two weeks
before Christmas, and go into Boston with Mrs. White to buy all the
things she had previously thought over for these ten and their
parents; and one winter she had made herself all ready to take the
ten-o'clock train, and had just taken her pocket-book out of the
drawer when she was called down-stairs to see a poor woman who had
come begging for some clothes for her husband.