"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."