"What are we to do, Miles?" grannie asked again.
"Oh, I'll see about it," said father. "There's no hurry. I'll get a job or two somewhere. And they'll let us have things on credit anywhere. My good fortune is well enough known. We shan't starve."
"Maybe not," grannie said. "But if you don't look out, my dear, you'll make a big hole in your five thousand pounds, before ever it comes to you."
Father laughed loud at the idea. The money seemed to him too much ever to come to an end. Grannie went out of the room, and I went after her, I didn't know why. She crossed into the parlour, and sat down, and I was frightened at the look in her face.
"It's nothing," she said,—"only a sort of fainty feeling that comes over me once in a while. Just to show me I'm an old woman, maybe. Don't you mind."
"O grannie, is it because you're fretting at having to leave the old home?" I asked: for I knew how it grieved her.
"I dare say it is," she said: "I've a silly sort of fondness for places, and somehow I've never felt right and like myself since that was settled. But I'll have no words spoken to them, Phœbe. For it's not that which cuts most deep. It is seeing how things are tending, and knowing I can do nought to stop what is wrong."
And I knew what she meant.