THE MONEY.
"Who told you about it, Miles?" asked grannie at tea-time.
Father had come back, and we all felt very much excited still, as was
only natural, I suppose. Grannie looked sad, I thought, but she was
the only one to seem so. I had had a restless feeling on me all day,
which made it difficult, to settle to work. I don't think I should have
settled to it at all, but for grannie's being so bent upon everything
going on just the same as usual. She would not abate one jot of
cleaning and washing and scouring for herself or for me. But mother
did nothing whatever the whole day, except stand at the door, and talk
to the neighbours. The news spread quickly, and numbers came to ask
what it meant. Some seemed really pleased for us, but they were few.
The greater number, as far as I could tell from scraps of talk which
I heard in going to and fro, were more inclined to be jealous, and to
wonder why such good fortune should have come to us and not to them.
And at tea-time grannie put the question,—"Who told you about it,
Miles?"
"Why, it was the lawyer who had the making of the will—a Mr. Carver. It
was him and young Mr. Johnstone," father said. "The lawyer came over
by train from Lanston this morning, and he told Mr. Johnstone first,
and then they sent for me and told me. Mr. Johnstone said I was a lucky
man, and he shook hands with me—first time he ever thought of doing
that."
"Young Mr. Johnstone isn't near so stuck-up as his father," mother said.
"He's more of a gentleman," added grannie; "that's why."
"There's room for him to be," said father. "Well, he told me I was a
lucky man, and Mr. Carver talked a deal. I was so dazed at the news, I
didn't half take in all he said. Something about saving and investing
and stocks,—I don't know what it was."
"I think you'd be wise, Miles, to ask him to say it again, and to take
his advice," said grannie. "He knows more of such things than we do."
"Oh, I'm not so sure," says father, thrusting his hands into his
pockets. "I'm not at all so sure of that, mother. He's a lawyer, and
he'd like to have a finger in the pie, I don't doubt. But I don't want
any of my five thousand pounds to stick to his fingers. He's too sleek
and smooth-spoken by half for me. I don't trust him."
"Then you'll ask Mr. Scott," said grannie.
"I'll think it over," says father. "No need to be in such a hurry. Time
enough to make up our minds."
"I'll tell you one thing that is on my mind," said grannie, speaking
slowly, and looking at us all round in turn. "What about the poor
fellow who was expecting five thousand pounds from his father, and who
hasn't got it?"
"Jem Morison! Ah, poor wretch, yes," says father in an indifferent sort
of way.
"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.
"Oh, that's what you're driving at, is it?" said he. "No, no,
grannie—no nonsense of that sort for me. I'll keep the money fast when
I get it. As Morison has sown, he may reap. He's nothing to me, nor I
to him."
"He and you are cousins born," grannie said. "Your father's father and
the mother of the old man that's dead were brother and sister."
"So much the better for me," father answered. "If I hadn't come next
in blood-relationship, old Morison wouldn't have willed the money to
me. But it's little enough we owe to any of them in the past, you know,
mother. Why, dear me, the Morisons have counted themselves a deal too
grand for many a year to have to do with such as we."
"The more reason to be ready to show them kindness now," says grannie.
Father repeated the word "kindness" in a rough sort of way. "Why, you
don't really think," says he, "that any living man would be such a born
ass as to give up five thousand pounds of his own free will!"
"If he saw it right! Yes, there have been such things done," grannie
said, with a kindling in her eyes. "But I would be content if you would
give him half, Miles."
Father brought down his clenched fist on the table, with a bang which
made the cups and saucers rattle.
"I'll not do it," he said. "I'll not give him one half, nor one
quarter, nor one tenth—no, nor one shilling of the money. It's mine,
and I'll keep it. Why, bless me, the world would be upside down
altogether, if such notions as yours got followed out. You've a sort of
craze, grannie, with your religious ways, and that is how it is. But
you needn't hug this notion, nor speak of it to anybody. Morison is not
going to have one shilling of the money."