Grandmother's Fairy Tales

A bench under a tree carries the whole scene. The grandmother reads from a large open book, a girl in a yellow dress tucked up beside her on a stack of volumes, a red-haired boy kneeling on the seat to see the page. Around the base lie the toys they abandoned: a tin locomotive with carriages, a bucket and spade, a trumpet, a bundle of clothes. Her finger rests mid-line, holding the story exactly where it stopped.