"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." CHAPTER IV. CONGRATULATIONS. THE next few days were very stirring. People were always coming in and out, to talk over our "piece of good fortune." Neighbours kept dropping in to congratulate us, and to ask particulars, and to find something more to gossip about. And mother liked nothing better than to talk with everybody about what had happened, and to boast of all that she and father meant to do with the five thousand pounds, as soon as ever it came to us. "Of course you won't stay any longer in this little cottage," one said. I heard her, and I thought the words were said sneeringly. I didn't like the person who said them—Mrs. Raikes, the wife of a tailor who lived near. But mother took up the idea, and could talk of nothing else for hours. Grannie said quietly—"If you go, you and Miles, I don't go with you;" and she said no more.