How was life for Ruth and Lucille when they live with their grandmother in the book, Housekeeping?

The girls' grandmother cares for them very well, giving Ruth and Lucille the physical consolation of warm, comfortable shelter, food and attention, but she never asks them about their life in Seattle, and seems distracted, as if she can't see them even as she is tending to their needs. Ruth explains that her grandmother was too old, and this foreshadows her later insight that their mother was also too absorbed in her own sorrow to see Ruth and Lucille.