Selina: Her Hopeful Efforts and Her Livelier Failures

by George Madden Martin

"Have you any idea what is the matter, Mamma? The matter with Papa's affairs, I mean?"

"He's been worried all summer, and you've seen for yourself how haggard he's come to be. There was some talk of his losing his two best agencies last spring. The rest of the business doesn't amount to much, and I'm afraid it must be that he's lost them."

"Mamma, don't you think we've a right to know? I'll go down to him at his office now, if you're willing I may, and ask him? I'll dress and go down to him, if you'll let me?"

"I'm through," said her mother, "I feel that I've failed. The heart's gone out of me. Do what you please."

Matters this time were past the point where Selina felt at all that she wanted to cry. She went quietly back to her room and set about putting things in order with rather more faithfulness than usual, the while thinking and planning her morning so that she might go to her father as she said.

It was past ten o'clock. By the time she dressed and started it would be near or quite eleven. At one o'clock, Tuttle Jones, his mother, Mrs. Sampson, his sister, and a bevy of young people were coming by for her in a tally-ho driven by Tuttle. Their destination was the jockey-club, where they would have lunch before the races, the fall trots opening to-day.

Selina had never been to a clubhouse, and for knowledge of races had seen a derby once in company with her father and Culpepper. But she would have given all chances to come of ever seeing the one or the other, if she'd known how to get out of going to-day. Her soul was sick and also her spirit. Papa, haggard and broken! And Mamma turned on him with reproach, after giving up the fight!

And yet this coaching-party was result of the discovery by Tuttle that she, Selina, never had been to so routine a thing as the race-course clubhouse, or to so perfunctory a piece of business as the trotting races. His manner concerning these sins of omission in her bringing-up was perfect, but he filled up the blanks in her all too meager experience as rapidly as possible after discovery.