{{betlep080.png}} Coletti's maid opened the door, to tell them that the countess was still in the bath and to say that she had suggested, if the girls were ready first, a trip upstairs to see "Grandmother." Lucia nodded without comment and turned away with Betty. She hesitated. "Mother thinks I ought to go," she said, "and I suppose she must mean that I take you. Our special friends know, Betty, that Grandmother Ferris is -- queer. She is not my grandmother at all, but we call her that. She is the mother of Uncle's wife and she went to pieces in an accident a few years ago. The doctor says her mind may come back and she's quite harmless. You might not notice anything, but I thought I'd better tell you for fear she says some of the queer things she does say. She can't bear to go out of these rooms of hers on the third floor, though we coax her down to sleep in the hot summer days -- that is, whoever is here does. Uncle won't insist on her going to a sanitarium; and so she has a nurse and a maid too and they take turns stay- ing with her. I don't know what is going to happen when Uncle marries again, and my mother says that he is sure to. That's one worry in this house, Betty." Betty nodded soberly. She rather dreaded going, but if it was Lucia's duty, she surely [[80]]