I have many a time had this thought about poor father. He was such a kind man in those days, and so steady. He liked his pipe and his glass of beer, it is true, but he didn't go to excess with either, and he loved his home and seldom went to the public. He brought his wages straight home to grannie always; for it was grannie who managed things, not mother. They were very unlike each other. Grannie liked work, and mother couldn't abide it. Grannie could not be happy without everything neat and nice about her, and mother did not care how anything was. Grannie had always managed everything before father married, and she kept it on after he married. Mother did not mind. She liked to be saved trouble. Mother was a pretty little woman, with blue eyes and a nice smile. But she was always untidy. Even grannie could not cure her of her untidiness. I don't know what the house would have been like, except for grannie: but that made all the difference. She never let a speck of dust lie anywhere, and she was a beautiful cook. Grannie set herself early to train me into her ways, and I think I took after her naturally. "You know, Phœbe," she used to say sometimes, "if anything happens to me, it will all come upon you. Somehow, your mother doesn't seem to have the knack; and if somebody else beside her didn't keep things straight, there would be a terrible muddle. Maybe she would not mind, but your father would, and it's a terrible thing to live in a muddle. So see you do your best to learn." I did do my best, and I think she found me an apt scholar. By fourteen years old I could turn-out tidy little dinners without any difficulty, and I was a capital hand at cleaning up; and as for sewing and darning, I don't really think there was another girl in the place who could have surpassed me. I was a good deal more grannie's child than mother's. Mother cared most for Asaph. There were only two of us, and Asaph was two years younger than me. He was very like mother in looks and ways, little and pretty, with blue eyes and curly hair, and a sort of easy soft way of doing things. But he was not so easy as not to like having his own way, and he didn't take it softly if anybody crossed him. He loved to lie in bed too, and he hated lessons and work. And mother indulged him right and left. Grannie seldom meddled about Asaph, for it almost always raised a storm if she did.