When Sam Franklin had saved ten pounds, and had two Bank of England notes to take care of, his difficulty and perplexity had very much increased. There was no Post-office Savings-bank, and he had no faith in the old savings-banks, for he could remember how his poor old mother had lost every penny of her painful savings by the breaking of the one she had put her money into. He dare not tell Ann about it, after keeping such a secret so long. The money became a trouble to him, though perhaps it was his most cherished possession. Certainly he thought of it oftener than of Ann or Johnny, for wherever he hid it, it could not but be a source of anxiety to him. If he took it to the work-yard with him he was fearful of losing it, whilst if he left it at home he was quite as much alarmed lest Ann should find it. How it would alter the face of things if she discovered that he was the owner of all that money, and had never told her! At length, when his savings mounted up to twenty pounds, a bright idea struck him one day. He stayed at home the next Sunday evening, and having found his old wedding waistcoat, which was lined with a good strong linen lining, he carefully unpicked a part of one of the seams large enough to take in a folded bank-note, and spread them as high as he could reach with his finger up and down the breast of it. He could not stitch it up again as neatly as it had been sewn before, but he was obliged to trust to Ann not noticing it, for it was a worn-out waistcoat and past her regard altogether: yet when she came home the first thing she saw was that he had it on with his coat buttoned across it. ‘Good gracious, Sam!’ she cried, ‘whatever made you put on that old thing?’ ‘It’s warmer than any I’ve got,’ he answered, putting his hand up against the breast of it where the bank-notes lay safe and hidden. ‘It’s so old-fashioned,’ she said, discontentedly; ‘but it doesn’t matter much if you won’t go out of doors in it. Men have no notion of things.’ ‘What was the text, Ann?’ he inquired, simply to turn away her attention from the old waistcoat. ‘Oh! it hadn’t anything to do with us,’ she replied, more cheerfully; ‘it was, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’ Nothing for us in that, you know, though the preacher did say we might love it as much from craving after it as having it. Well, I neither have it, nor crave it.’