"I'm never sure it isn't better to be frank," held Auntie.
Selina's concern returned to her own affairs. Selina Auboussier Wistar! Why Auboussier? Because her father was Robert Auboussier Wistar. Why the Auboussier in either case was to be dwelt upon so insistingly and in full, was never very dazzlingly clear, except that Mamma decreed it. The name had brought her father nothing other in his day than a silver mug, so far as Selina knew, and it had not even brought her that. But it did roll off the tongue as though it had claims. In the very nicest sort of way perhaps this was the explanation.
The affairs of her elders in the room again intruded.
"I paid the bills for all those extras we had not counted on when Selina graduated in June," Mamma was saying, and defensively again, "and said nothing about them. It seemed best at the time. And once I got behind in this way on the other bills I haven't seemed able to catch up."
"I needn't have had the carriage and the flowers and the rest of it if I'd known," claimed Selina passionately. "And I'm sure Auntie is right. Everybody in a family ought to know everything."
"I cannot allow such a tone from you, Selina," returned her mother decidedly. "And of whom is it you speak in this disparaging manner? Surely not of your mother? And I will not think you mean your father?"
Her father? Tradition, which meant Selina's own little mother again, told how Mr. Robert Auboussier Wistar at the beginning of things, which was before Selina at all could remember, had made a bold dash and start in life, proprietor of his own inherited iron foundry. It lent solidity and importance to the past, and support to the present. A structural iron railroad and foot-bridge across a turbulent creek at the city's edge, marks the crest of this gentleman's industrial prosperity. It is an ugly bridge where it might have achieved beauty, Selina is forced to admit this now, but then when the family walks on Sunday afternoons and on holidays led to it with something of the spirit which carries the faithful to Mecca, she obediently thrilled with pride as regularly as her mother pointed out the structure to her.
The glittering career of Papa and the foundry had been brief, and Selina had it from her mother and her auntie that this is a sad world for the honorable and trusting man in business.