It was wonderful how folks ran after us in those days. I had not known before that we had one quarter so many friends. The neighbours were for ever dropping in to talk of our good fortune, and mother seemed such a favourite with them all. I could not help thinking that the money had a good deal to do with her being so, else why should they have cared so little about her before we heard of the five thousand pounds? Grannie felt the same about it that I did, I could see plainly enough, but mother did not. She took it all for real, and was delighted. A great many asked us out to Sunday dinners, and did their best to give good fare. We hadn't been used to going out on a Sunday to dine, for grannie had always set her face against the custom, and father had only once in a way done it. But now he said it would seem stuck-up and unneighbourly to refuse, just when this "windfall," as he called it, had come to us. He said it would look as if we counted ourselves too grand for the neighbours. Grannie told him the real question lay deeper; for it wasn't a question of giving offence to one or two people, who ought to know us better than to be so easily offended, but of breaking God's holy day. But father was not to be persuaded, and he and mother went out Sunday after Sunday, and took Asaph with them. And, somehow, after father had been out pleasuring all the afternoon, he did not seem inclined to go to Church in the evening, as he had been always used to do; and one day and another he found some excuse for staying away. I could see that it was a great grief to grannie. I did not go to these dinners with father and mother, but kept grannie company at home. It was grannie's wish, and mother did not care, for Asaph was her favourite. I don't think I always quite liked being the one left behind, and yet I should not have been happy doing anything else. But if I did not like it, I took care that grannie should not see what I felt. She was sorry enough already about the break-up of our old quiet Sundays. One day father came in, chuckling and laughing, and carrying a big bundle under his arm. "What d'you think I've got now?" says he. "O Miles! has the money come at last?" shrieked mother. "No, it hasn't," said he. "Why, you don't think surely that I'd be carrying five thousand pounds rolled up into a bundle like this! No, it isn't the money, but it's something. And it don't so much matter now, if the money should be longer coming. They'll trust me down at Trowgood's for anything I want. Trowgood himself came up to me in the street, and told me so, as civil as could be. So I went straight off with him, and did some shopping." "I don't like Mr. Trowgood, and I never did," said grannie. "He's a deep one, Miles." "Maybe so, maybe no," says father. "Deep or shallow, that won't keep me from using his goods, if so be they suit my wants. And nobody could speak more civil than he did, anyway. Look here, Sue."