abitual reticence even with an old
friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the
look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's
solvency, was terrifying. She hid her hands under the table so that he
shouldn't see they were trembling. She wanted the truth from him now,
rather than vaguely comforting generalties, and if she betrayed her real
feelings, these latter were what she would drive him back upon.

"Can you tell me," she asked after a pause, "exactly how bad it is?"

He couldn't furnish details. He told her though that there couldn't be
any doubt her father's affairs were more involved than his summary of
them had made them appear. "He isn't a very good bookkeeper, of
course,--never was; and he has never taken remonstrances very seriously.
Why, about all I know is that Martin Whitney is worried. He tried to
dissuade John from going in anywhere near so heavily on the Hickory Hill
project.--And that, of course, was before we had any reason to suppose
that his ability to earn money was going to be ..."

It was apparent that he discarded the word that came to his tongue here
and cast about for another; "interfered with," was what he finally hit
upon. "Then he's your aunt's trustee and I believe that complicates the
situation, though just how much I don't know. Rush didn't get a letter
from Martin this morning, did he?"

"I don't know," Mary said numbly.

"I thought perhaps," he explained, "that might be the reason why you
didn't want to go to their house tonight. Rush doesn't quite understand
Martin's position nor do justice to it. Martin wants to have a really
thorough talk with him I know, as soon as possible."

"Wallace ..." Mary asked, after another silence, "what was the word
you didn't say when you spoke of father's earning power
being--interfered with? Was it--cut off? Do you mean that father
isn't--ever going to be well?"

Startled as he was, he did not attempt a total denial; answered her,
though with an effort, candidly.

"It's not hopeless, at all," he assured her. "It really is not. If he'll
rest, live an outdoor life for the next year or two, he has a good chance
to become a well man again. It's probable that he will,--practically so.
But if he attempts to take up his practise in the autumn it will simply
be, so Darby declares, suicide."

"That means tuberculosis, I suppose," she said.

He nodded; then involuntarily he reached his hands out toward h