It would be difficult to find a pie in Coldriver
which was not marked by his thumb. So it came about that when he became
convinced that Grandmother Penny was unhappy because of various
restrictions and inhibitions placed on her by her son, the dry-goods
merchant, and by her daughter-in-law, he determined to intervene.
Scattergood was partial to old ladies, and this partiality can be traced
to his earliest days in Coldriver. He loved white hair and wrinkled
cheeks and eyes that had once been youthful and glowing, but were dulled
and dimmed by watching the long procession of the years.
Now he sat on the piazza of his hardware store, his shoes on the
planking beside him, and his pudgy toes wriggling like the trained
fingers of an eminent pianist. It was a knotty problem. An ordinary
problem Scattergood could solve with shoes on feet, but let the matter
take on eminent difficulty and his toes must be given freedom and elbow
room, as one might say. Later in life his wife, Mandy, after he had
married her, tried to cure him of this habit, which she considered
vulgar, but at this point she failed signally.
The facts about Grandmother Penny were, not that she was consciously ill
treated.
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