"Then I could look in pretty often to see how you was, and bring you in a bit of fresh fish as often as you would care to have it. Lucy would take a delight, too, in making 'ee that sort of thing," nodding towards the jelly, "or anything else you fancied. We'd be at hand, too, to help 'ee if you wasn't very well." Granny Barnes was touched, and when she looked up there were tears in her eyes. The prospect was tempting. She had felt very forlorn and old, and helpless lately. She had often felt too that she would like: "A little petting At life's setting." "It's good of you to think of it, Peter," she said, hesitatingly. Then, fearing that he might have spoken on the impulse of the moment, and that she was showing herself too anxious for his help and Lucy's, she drew herself up. "But--well, this is _home_, and I don't fancy I could settle down in a strange place, and amongst strangers, at my time of life." "You'd be with those that are all you've got belonging to you in this world," said Peter. But granny's mood had changed. She would not listen to any more coaxing, and her son-in-law, seeming to understand her, changed the subject. Poor Mona, who did not understand so well, felt only vexed and impatient with the poor perverse old woman, for not falling in at once with a plan so delightful to herself. Mona learned to understand as time went on, but she was too young yet. "But, granny, it would be ever so much nicer than this dull old place, and--and you'd have mother as well as me to look after you. I like Seacombe ever so much better than Hillside. Why won't you go, granny?" Peter Carne groaned. Mona, by her tactlessness, was setting her grandmother dead against such a plan, and undoing all the good he had done. Granny Barnes would never be driven into taking a step, but she would see things in her own time and in her own way, if she felt that no one was trying to force her. He held up his hand for silence. "Your grandmother knows best what'll suit her. It isn't what you like, it's what's best for her that we've all got to think about." But granny's anger had been roused. "It may be a dull old place, but it's home," she said sharply. "You can't understand what that means. You don't seem to have any particular feeling or you wouldn't be so ready to leave first one and then the other, without even a heartache. I wonder sometimes, Mona, if you've got any heart. Perhaps it's best that you shouldn't have; you're saved a lot of pain." Granny began to whimper a little, to her son-in-law's great distress. "Anyway, you were ready enough to run to the 'dull old place' when you were in trouble," she added, reproachfully, and Mona had no answer.