Chapter III: The Money

"Who told you about it, Miles?" asked grannie at tea-time.

Father had come back, and we all felt very much excited still, as was only natural, I suppose. Grannie looked sad, I thought, but she was the only one to seem so. I had had a restless feeling on me all day, which made it difficult, to settle to work. I don't think I should have settled to it at all, but for grannie's being so bent upon everything going on just the same as usual. She would not abate one jot of cleaning and washing and scouring for herself or for me. But mother did nothing whatever the whole day, except stand at the door, and talk to the neighbours. The news spread quickly, and numbers came to ask what it meant. Some seemed really pleased for us, but they were few. The greater number, as far as I could tell from scraps of talk which I heard in going to and fro, were more inclined to be jealous, and to wonder why such good fortune should have come to us and not to them.

And at tea-time grannie put the question,—"Who told you about it, Miles?"

"Why, it was the lawyer who had the making of the will—a Mr. Carver. It was him and young Mr. Johnstone," father said. "The lawyer came over by train from Lanston this morning, and he told Mr. Johnstone first, and then they sent for me and told me. Mr. Johnstone said I was a lucky man, and he shook hands with me—first time he ever thought of doing that."

"Young Mr. Johnstone isn't near so stuck-up as his father," mother said.

"He's more of a gentleman," added grannie; "that's why."

"There's room for him to be," said father. "Well, he told me I was a lucky man, and Mr. Carver talked a deal. I was so dazed at the news, I didn't half take in all he said. Something about saving and investing and stocks,—I don't know what it was."

"I think you'd be wise, Miles, to ask him to say it again, and to take his advice," said grannie. "He knows more of such things than we do."

"Oh, I'm not so sure," says father, thrusting his hands into his pockets. "I'm not at all so sure of that, mother. He's a lawyer, and he'd like to have a finger in the pie, I don't doubt. But I don't want any of my five thousand pounds to stick to his fingers. He's too sleek and smooth-spoken by half for me. I don't trust him."

"Then you'll ask Mr. Scott," said grannie.

"I'll think it over," says father. "No need to be in such a hurry. Time enough to make up our minds."

"I'll tell you one thing that is on my mind," said grannie, speaking slowly, and looking at us all round in turn. "What about the poor fellow who was expecting five thousand pounds from his father, and who hasn't got it?"

"Jem Morison! Ah, poor wretch, yes," says father in an indifferent sort of way.

"He shouldn't have offended his father," said mother. "But I am glad he did."

"It's sorrowful work for him," said grannie.

"Well, he took his choice," father said. "He married against his father's will, and now his wife's sickly, and they've got twins, and he is in bad health, and can't work. Oh, I dare say he's sorry enough. Most people are when they've taken their own way and have to suffer for it. 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure,' you know. But there's another saying quite as true, and that is, 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.' If young Morison hadn't gone against his father, we shouldn't have this fine windfall. I declare, mother, I don't think you half take in how good it is. Five thousand pounds! Why it'll do anything! Sue is going to be a lady now."

"Fifty thousand pounds wouldn't make a lady of one who wasn't so in herself," said grannie quietly. "Wearing a silk dress is not being a lady, Miles, and you know that as well as I do. I've no wish to see Sue a lady, nor you a gentleman. All I want is to see you both living for God in that station of life where He has put you."

"Well now, mother, you won't go for to say it isn't God who has given us this five thousand pounds, I suppose," says father sharply.

"Yes," she said, "I know He has, and I thank Him for it. But it's temptation, Miles."

Father laughed out loud.

"It's temptation," repeated grannie. "It may be very sore temptation, Miles. I think I'd almost sooner have seen you with temptation of the other sort,—with having too little, instead of too much—if God had willed to send it. I'd have feared less for your being led astray by it."

"Now, mother, you do take a very melancholical view of affairs, and that I must say," protested father. "And what's more, I don't think it's kind. Just because something good has come for once in our lives, you must needs croak about it, and wish it was something bad instead."

"Grannie would like us all to sit down and cry," said mother.

She and father often called her "grannie" just as we children did.

"No, I don't want that, Sue," said grannie. "But I'd have you thankful to God, my dear, and I'd have your eyes open to danger—that's all. And there's one more word I must say, though I'm afraid you won't like it. Seems to me, Miles,—"

Grannie made a stop. "Seems what?" asked father.

"Suppose we were in the place of that poor young Morison, and he was in your place—how do you think you would feel?"

"How? Why, I should count myself an uncommon fool, to have thrown away five thousand pounds for the sake of a pretty face," says father.

"I shouldn't wonder but you'd feel too you had a sort of right to the money, and that the other man hadn't any right to it at all," grannie said.

Father burst into another loud laugh, but it wasn't a happy or a merry laugh.

"Oh, that's what you're driving at, is it?" said he. "No, no, grannie—no nonsense of that sort for me. I'll keep the money fast when I get it. As Morison has sown, he may reap. He's nothing to me, nor I to him."

"He and you are cousins born," grannie said. "Your father's father and the mother of the old man that's dead were brother and sister."

"So much the better for me," father answered. "If I hadn't come next in blood-relationship, old Morison wouldn't have willed the money to me. But it's little enough we owe to any of them in the past, you know, mother. Why, dear me, the Morisons have counted themselves a deal too grand for many a year to have to do with such as we."

"The more reason to be ready to show them kindness now," says grannie.

Father repeated the word "kindness" in a rough sort of way. "Why, you don't really think," says he, "that any living man would be such a born ass as to give up five thousand pounds of his own free will!"

"If he saw it right! Yes, there have been such things done," grannie said, with a kindling in her eyes. "But I would be content if you would give him half, Miles."

Father brought down his clenched fist on the table, with a bang which made the cups and saucers rattle.

"I'll not do it," he said. "I'll not give him one half, nor one quarter, nor one tenth—no, nor one shilling of the money. It's mine, and I'll keep it. Why, bless me, the world would be upside down altogether, if such notions as yours got followed out. You've a sort of craze, grannie, with your religious ways, and that is how it is. But you needn't hug this notion, nor speak of it to anybody. Morison is not going to have one shilling of the money."