Then I went out, of course, an' left them.

But I heard 'most everything that was said, just the same, for I was right in the next room dustin', and the door wasn't quite shut.
"First your grandmother said real polite--she was always polite--but in a cold little voice that made even me shiver in the other room, that she did not desire to be read to or sung to, and that she did not wish to play games.

She had called her daughter-in-law in to have a serious talk with her.

Then she told her, still very polite, that she was noisy an' childish, an' undignified, an' that it was not only silly, but very wrong for her to expect to have her husband's entire attention; that he had his own work, an' it was a very important one.
He was going to be president of the college some day, like his father before him; an' it was her place to help him in every way she could--help him to be popular an' well-liked by all the college people an' students; an' he couldn't be that if she insisted all the time on keepin' him to herself, or lookin' sour an' cross if she couldn't have him.
"Of course that ain't all she said; but I remember this part particular on account of what happened afterward.

You see--your ma--she felt awful bad.