I was flattered; but not convinced. I knew that he was extremely proud of his country and had never forgiven my parents for their indiscretion in allowing me to be born in London, thereby presenting an extra citizen to England without any effort on her part.
More unforgivable still, neither my parents nor I had ever returned to America.
In spite of the suddenness of grandpa's arrival and the extremity of his age, for over a year we lived amicably together. Except for a tendency to be deaf and wilful at times, he gave little trouble. He ate very little, he said very little, and he listened only when shouted at. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to describe my home--at that time--as a true haven of rest.
Picture it! There was Gran'pa, aged ninety-five--a nodder by the fire, a mumbler of tedious trifles, a scoffer at the present, but a relic of the past; there was myself, aged thirty-two--a widower, a respectable salaried official, moderately lazy and living principally and peacefully for the day (because there was not much to look forward to in the morrow); there was Molly, my twelve-year-old offspring--a long-legged schoolgirl, who ought to have been born a boy (like most girls of this generation); and there was Nanny, aged anything over fifty--the white-haired, sweet-tempered, motherly old thing who had been one of the "supers" present at my initial entrance on the world's stage.
There we were, the four of us! We never quarrelled, or argued, or indulged in riotous living, or suffered want, or did anything particularly exciting. We went on from day to day and from night to night like most of the other 40,000 people in our suburb. Big things happened in New York, in London, in Paris, in Moscow, in Berlin--or in the wide heavens above and the sea beneath--and we read journalistic and exaggerated accounts of these events in the morning papers, with mild interest and occasional emotion. We were just one of the individual family vertebræ of that middle class backbone which has made England the nation that it is--a rather self-centred, fairly intelligent, and very inquisitive community.
Then came that innocent-looking newspaper announcement concerning the new theory of rejuvenation by means of glandular graftings. It ran as follows:--