"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.