‘Mother,’ she said. ‘We’re both honest, both John and me. He can do for himself, and I, so far as I can see, will never be able to make up my mind to do anything for myself. Why won’t you take us at our word, and take grandfather’s money, and, for the first time in your life, rest?’ The three were all very different. John, perhaps, in his confidence of young manhood, and that consciousness of being entirely a satisfactory person, which cannot fail to have a certain influence on a young man’s way of looking both at himself and others, was now the one most like his mother--and yet he was not like her. While Susie, with her soft eyes, her soft manner, her little flutter of indecision, was as unlike as possible in sentiment, though her features were almost identical with those of the self-controlled and serious woman, with so many responsibilities on her head, and so distinct a grasp of them all, whom she was imploring to take up that softer task, to retire, and accept the generosity of her children and repose from her labours. Mrs. Sandford looked the tallest of the three, not indeed in fact, though she was taller for a woman than John was for a man--but certainly in nature, in sentiment, in the impression which her still graceful, slight figure, her head carried high, her general air of authority, gave. She looked from one to another with a smile, in which there was (to Susie) indulgent toleration of miscomprehension, to John, a little indifference to what he might think at all. ‘Circumstances alter everything,’ she said; ‘if I were really an old woman wanting rest I might take it from you. But I am not. I am as able for my work as either of you. I like it, and if you gave me your money you might have to wait a long time before it came back to you. All these things are against Susie’s proposal. And as for John----’ He looked at her with the opposition in his eyes which had never been quenched since the moment they had met at the little station at Edgeley, on the day his grandmother died. ‘What of John?’ he said. ‘Only that nobody at your age can say what chances a few days may bring forth; what occasion there may be for the support of the little fortune he has a right to, however little it may be. Let us leave this subject for something that will interest you more. John, your grandfather’s house has not been sold, though I had thought it better to do so, had the opportunity occurred. But, as it happens, the opportunity has never occurred. It is yours, now, to do what you like with it, and the tenant who has been in it is going away. I have thought that perhaps you would like to go--and see for yourself what is best to be done. You have still friends there: and you have had few holidays--few amusements.’