laughed at him. He tried in his turn to borrow,
but no one could spare a penny, and when things went entirely wrong with
him, one of those who had got most from him made a funny saying about
him: 'Now Lack lacks everything because everybody has what Lack lacks.'
So, you see, you mustn't think too little of money either, but learn to
be careful and keep what you have."

Keith nodded dutifully, but where the right road lay, he could not see.

"The worst thing was," the mother went on, "that your great-grandmother
died when Granny was only nine. There were brothers and sisters, too,
and she was the youngest. And it was then that her father got the idea
to send her to some farmer people he knew, quite some distance from
where he lived. He did it partly for the sake of Granny's health, and
partly because he was too worried about other things to look after her
properly himself. And he paid a lot of money for her board, and sent her
fine clothes, and arranged that she was to be taught by the pastor of
the parish, and he sent friends to ask about her, but he never came
himself. The people who were to take care of Granny kept the money and
the clothes, and put her to work as if she had been a servant, and
didn't let her get the least bit of schooling. And when her father's
friends came and asked about her, they told all sorts of tales about how
well she was doing, but she was so shy, they said, that she always ran
away when any visitor came to the place."

"Did she," asked Keith.

"Yes, she really did," the mother admitted. "She was ashamed of the way
she looked and was dressed, and yet she was quite pretty, and she had
the most wonderful hair that reached to her feet when she let it down."

"But, why didn't she tell somebody?" Keith insisted, his blood running
hot with wrath at the injustice to which Granny had been submitted.

"Oh, because ..." said his mother wearily, "because your grandmother
has always been peculiar in that way when she knew she was being
wronged. 'What is the use?' she says. And then word came that her father
had gone bankrupt and had died soon after. No one seemed to pay the
least attention to her. She stayed where she was, and she couldn't work
any harder than she had done all the time. But when she was to be
confirmed, and had to go to church every week with all the other
children of her own age, she was the poorest of them all, both in fact
and in appearance, she didn't have one person in the wor