The Portrait of a Lady

My grandmother like everybody grandmother was an oid woman. she had been oid and wrinkled for the twenty years that I had known her. People said that she had once been young and pretty and had even had a husdand but that was hard to believe. My grandfather portrait hung above the mantelpiece in the drawing room. He wore a big turban and loose- fitting clothes. His long , white beard covered the best part of his chest and he looked at least a hundred years old. He did not look the sort of person who would have a wife or children. he looked as if he could only have lots and lots of grandchildren. As for my grandmother being young and pretty, the thought was almost revolting . she often told us of the games she used to play as a child. that seemed quits absurd and unbignified on her part and we treated it like the fables of the prophets she used to tell us.

She had always been short and fat and slightly bent.