Once more she stopped and returned abruptly to her story: 

“Your great-grandfather made and sold hats, and he earned a lot of money, and they made him a City Councillor....”

“Where,” Keith broke in again.

“In Skara,” his mother explained, “which is a city that lies a long way from here, and when you begin to learn geography, you will know where it is....  Everybody liked your great-grandfather....”

“What was his name,” Keith couldn’t help asking.

“Lack,” she said, “and now you mustn’t interrupt me any more if you want me to go on.”

“Please,” Keith pleaded.  “I won’t!”

“The reason they liked him,” she resumed, “was that he was so good-hearted that he couldn’t say no to anybody or anything.  He didn’t seem to care for money at all, and he used to say:  ’What’s money between friends?’ Everybody wanted to be friends with him in those days, and everybody borrowed from him, until he didn’t have enough left for his business, and then they 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.