We were very much astonished when Grandfather Holabird came in and told us, one morning, of his having bought it,--the empty Beaman house, that nobody had lived in for five years. The Haddens had bought the land for somebody in their family who wanted to come out and build, and so the old house was to be sold and moved away; and nobody but old Mr. Holabird owned land near enough to put it upon. For it was large and solid-built, and could not be taken far. We were a great deal more astonished when he came in again, another day, and proposed that we should go and live in it. We were all a good deal afraid of Grandfather Holabird. He had very strict ideas of what people ought to do about money. Or rather of what they ought to do _without_ it, when they didn't happen to have any. Mrs. Stephen pulled down the green blinds when she saw him coming that day,--him and his cane. Barbara said she didn't exactly know which it was she dreaded; she thought she could bear the cane without him, or even him without the cane; but both together were "_scare-mendous_; they did put down so." Mrs. Holabird pulled down the blinds, because he would be sure to notice the new carpet the first thing; it was a cheap ingrain, and the old one had been all holes, so that Barbara had proposed putting up a board at the door,--"Private way; dangerous passing." And we had all made over our three winters' old cloaks this year, for the sake of it: and we hadn't got the carpet then till the winter was half over. But we couldn't tell all this to Grandfather Holabird. There was never time for the whole of it. And he knew that Mr. Stephen was troubled just now for his rent and taxes. For Stephen Holabird was the one in this family who couldn't make, or couldn't manage, money. There is always one. I don't know but it is usually the best one of all, in other ways. Stephen Holabird is a good man, kind and true; loving to live a gentle, thoughtful life, in his home and among his books; not made for the din and scramble of business. He never looks to his father; his father does not believe in allowing his sons to look to him; so in the terrible time of '57, when the loss and the worry came, he had to struggle as long as he could, and then go down with the rest, paying sixty cents on the dollar of all his debts, and beginning again, to try and earn the forty, and to feed and clothe his family meanwhile. Grandfather Holabird sent us down all our milk, and once a week, when he bought his Sunday dinner, he would order a turkey for us. In the summer, we had all the vegetables we wanted from his garden, and at Thanksgiving a barrel of cranberries from his meadow. But these obliged us to buy an extra half-barrel of sugar. For all these things we made separate small change of thanks, each time, and were all the more afraid of his noticing our new gowns or carpets. "When you haven't any money, don't buy anything," was his stern precept.