strict ideas of what people ought to do about money. Or rather of what
they ought to do _without_ it, when they didn't happen to have any.

Mrs. Stephen pulled down the green blinds when she saw him coming that
day,--him and his cane. Barbara said she didn't exactly know which it
was she dreaded; she thought she could bear the cane without him, or
even him without the cane; but both together were "_scare-mendous_;
they did put down so."

Mrs. Holabird pulled down the blinds, because he would be sure to
notice the new carpet the first thing; it was a cheap ingrain, and the
old one had been all holes, so that Barbara had proposed putting up a
board at the door,--"Private way; dangerous passing." And we had all
made over our three winters' old cloaks this year, for the sake of it:
and we hadn't got the carpet then till the winter was half over. But
we couldn't tell all this to Grandfather Holabird. There was never
time for the whole of it. And he knew that Mr. Stephen was troubled
just now for his rent and taxes. For Stephen Holabird was the one in
this family who couldn't make, or couldn't manage, money. There is
always one. I don't know but it is usually the best one of all, in
other ways.

Stephen Holabird is a good man, kind and true; loving to live a
gentle, thoughtful life, in his home and among his books; not made for
the din and scramble of business.

He never looks to his father; his father does not believe in allowing
his sons to look to him; so in the terrible time of '57, when the loss
and the worry came, he had to struggle as long as he could, and then
go down with the rest, paying sixty cents on the dollar of all his