But
I would like the girls to have a piano, they both play so well on the
melodeon! I would like them to be--well, like you, Miss Prudence, and not
like their rough, hardworking old mother. I've shed tears enough about
their education, and told the Lord about it times enough. If the Boston
plan didn't suit, we had another, Graham and I--he always listens and
depends upon my judgment. I'm afraid, sometimes, I depend upon my own
judgment more than upon the Lord's wisdom. But this plan was--" the
knitting needle was being pushed vigorously through her back hair now,
"to exchange the farm for a house and lot in town--Middlefield is quite a
town, you know--and he was to go back to his trade, and I was to take
boarders, and the girls were to take turns in schooling and
accomplishments. I am not over young myself, and he isn't over strong,
but we had decided on that. I shed some tears over it, and he looked pale
and couldn't sleep, for we've counted on this place as the home of our
old age which isn't so far off as it was when he put that twenty-five
hundred dollars into that bank. But I do breathe freer if I think we may
have this place to live and die on, small as it is and the poor living it
gives us. Father's place isn't much to speak of, and James will come in
for his share of that, so we haven't much to count on anywhere. I don't
know, though," the knitting needle was doing duty in the stocking again,
"about taking _your_ money. You were not his wife, you hadn't spent it or
connived at his knavery.
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