“O mother!  Mother!  That will be very salvation to me.  How good you are!  How good you are!” and there was a tone in John’s voice that was perhaps entirely fresh and new.  It went straight to his mother’s heart, and she continued, “I’ll give you a check in the morning, John.  You are varry, varry welcome, my dear lad.”

“How can you spare me so much?”

“Well, I’ve been saving a bit here and there and now and then for thirty years, and with interest coming and coming, a little soon counts up.  Why, John, I must have been saving for this very strait all these years.  Now, the silent money will talk and the idle money roll here and there, making more.  That is what money is cut round for—­I expect.”

“Mother, this is one of the happiest hours in my life.  I was carrying a big burden of anxiety.”

“Thou need not have carried it an hour; thou might hev known that God and thy mother would be sufficient.”

The next morning John went down the hill with a check for twenty thousand pounds in his pocket and a prayer of rest in his heart and a bubbling song on his lips.  And all my readers must have noticed that good fortune as well as misfortune has a way of coming in company.  There is a tendency in both to pour if they rain, and that day John had another large remittance from a Manchester house and the second mail brought him a letter which was as great a surprise as his mother’s loan.  It was from Lord Harlow and read as follows: 

     JOHN HATTON, MY GOOD FRIEND,

I must write you about three things that call for recognition from me.  The first is that I am forever your debtor for the fresh delightful company of your little daughter.  I have become a new man in her company.  She has lifted a great burden from my heart and taught me many things.  In my case it has been out of the mouths of babes I have heard wisdom.  My second reason for gratitude to you is the noble and humane manner in which you have taken the loss and privations this war entailed.  The name of Hatton has been thrice honored by your bearing of it and I count my niece the most fortunate of women to be your wife.  She and Martha have in a large measure helped to console me for the loss of my dear son.  The third call for recognition is, that I owe you some tangible proof of my gratitude.  Now I have a little money lying idle or nearly so, and if you can spend it in buying cotton, I do not know of any better use it can be put to.  I am sending in this a check on Coutts’ Bank for ten thousand pounds.  If it will help you a little, you will do me a great favor by setting poor men and women to work with it.  I heard dear little Martha reading her Bible lesson to her mother this morning.  It was about the man who folded his talent in a napkin and did nothing with it.  Take my offer, John, and help me to put my money to use, so that the Master may receive His own with usury, when he calls for it.

     Yours in heart and soul,
     HARLOW.