"You want to know, don't you?" says father, chucking Asaph under the chin; "don't you?" and he chucked me too. "Well, I'll tell you. I'm to have five thousand pounds!"
Grannie looked as if she fancied him gone mad. Mother shrieked and clapped her hands, and Asaph copied her.
"Five thousand pounds!" father said again.
"Who's given it to you, my dear?" asked grannie.
"Nobody. It's left to me in a will. Old Andrew Morison is dead, and he has been storing up his money for years, and he quarrelled with his son just at last, and willed it all away to me. Think of that! Five thousand pounds, Sue! Think of that! Five thousand pounds, mother!"
"It's the temptation," said grannie very low, and I heard her sigh.
"It's just lovely," cried mother. "Why, I can have a silk dress."
"Six, if you like," said father. "And Phœbe, too."
I don't know what I said. I felt all in a maze.
"Miles," said grannie, in a trembling voice, and she laid her hand on his arm. "It's a solemn charge for you. Don't you think we ought just to kneel down, and thank God, and ask Him to teach us how to spend it? It'll do us no manner of good without His blessing alongside."