"One would think we were going in for some awful trouble, only to hear you speak," father said. "But you're not going to put me into the dismals, mother, for all you can say. If it's a burden, it's an uncommon pleasant sort. Wish it was a little heavier, that's all."
"Yes, that's the way with men," says grannie quietly. "You'll soon begin to look on five thousand pounds as nothing, and to wish it was ten."
"Well, I shouldn't mind now, if it was ten," father said.
The next thing that came up was about a change of house. Mother wouldn't let the matter rest. Father did not seem to like the thought at first, for he knew how grannie was set against it. Grannie did not say to them what she had said to me, but just waited; and I did not tell it either. But mother let father have no peace. She was bent on getting a house in the same row with the Raikes', and on having a parlour that would beat Mrs. Raikes' parlour in smartness.
She and father talked it over one day, when grannie was not at hand. Father said he knew grannie would never leave the cottage; and mother said, it did not matter, for we should be quite near. Father said, it did matter, for there would be nothing straight without her, and nobody to do the work and the cooking, "and Phœbe couldn't manage all that alone." Mother said, "No, of course not, but we would keep a girl like the Raikes', and manage so." Father said he didn't see who would cook. And mother said, "Phœbe would, of course." Father said he didn't see why I was to drudge while others took their ease; but it was no good talking, for if grannie wouldn't come too, he should not leave the cottage. Mother pouted, and said that father cared more for grannie than for her. Father said it wasn't true; and mother said, yes, it was, or he wouldn't want her to live in a horrid little pokey hole, when he could afford her a nice house as well as not. And then she cried, and talked about her own home, when she was a girl, and wished she had never left it. Mother's father had been a tallow-chandler, and well-to-do, and mother had been a spoilt child.
Just when they got so far, grannie walked in. She heard mother's last words, and asked what it all meant. Father told her, and she said—"What's your wish, Miles?"
"I don't want to go without you, mother," says he. "I've never lived apart from you yet, and I don't mean to, if I can help it. I should think of you as lonesome here; and we should want you too."
"But that's your only reason?" says she. "You've no feeling at leaving the old place."
"Well, no—can't say as I have," said father. "I shouldn't mind a scrap more room to turn round in."
"And the money?" said she.