xious look.
The change in her since last he had seen her troubled him greatly.
Her round cheeks had fallen in, her old rosiness had given place to a grey
pallor. She stooped very much and looked shrunken too.

"Oh, granny, do!" cried Mona, eagerly. It was almost the first time she
had spoken, but the mere suggestion filled her with overwhelming joy and
relief.

"Then I could look in pretty often to see how you was, and bring you in a
bit of fresh fish as often as you would care to have it. Lucy would take
a delight, too, in making 'ee that sort of thing," nodding towards the
jelly, "or anything else you fancied. We'd be at hand, too, to help 'ee
if you wasn't very well."

Granny Barnes was touched, and when she looked up there were tears in her
eyes. The prospect was tempting. She had felt very forlorn and old, and
helpless lately. She had often felt too that she would like:

"A little petting
At life's setting."

"It's good of you to think of it, Peter," she said, hesitatingly.
Then, fearing that he might have spoken on the impulse of the moment,
and that she was showing herself too anxious for his help and Lucy's,
she drew herself up. "But--well, this is _home_, and I don't fancy I
could settle down in a strange place, and amongst strangers, at my time of
life."

"You'd be with those that are all you've got belonging to you in this
world," said Peter. But granny's mood had changed. She would not listen
to any more coaxing, and her son-in-law, seeming to understand her,
changed the subject.

Poor Mona, who did not understand so well, felt only vexed and impatient
with the poor perverse old woman, for not falling in at once with a plan
so delightful to herself. Mona learned to understand as time went on,
but she was too young yet.

"But, granny, it would be ever so much nicer than this dull old place,
and--and you'd have mother as well as me to look after you. I like
Seacombe ever so much better than Hillside. Why won't you go, granny?"

Peter Carne groaned. Mona, by her tactlessness, was setting her
grandmother dead against such a plan, and undoing all the good he had
done. Granny Barnes would never be driven into taking a step, but she
would see things in her own time and in her own way, if she felt that no
one was trying to force her. He held up his hand for silence.

"Your grandmother knows best what'll suit her. It isn't what you like,
it's what's best for her that we've al