“Oh, papa,” cried Marjory, seizing this opening. “It is dreadful to think how seldom we are warned in time! How we go on to the very edge of a precipice, and then—”
“Phoo!” said Mr. Heriot, “if a man does not keep a look-out before him, it’s nobody’s fault but his own.”
Thus the door was shut upon her again. She looked at him with a kind of despair, and put both her hands round his arm.
“Papa,” she said, “I think we have had a very tolerably happy life—nothing very much to find fault with. Everything has gone on comfortably. We have had no great troubles, no misfortunes to speak of—”
“I don’t know what you call misfortunes,” said her father. “That affair of the Western Bank was anything but pleasant.”
“Only money! What would you have, I should like to know? Only money! May, my dear, to be a sensible girl as you are, you sometimes speak very like a haverel. Loss of money is as great a misfortune as can befall a family. It brings a hundred other things in its train—loss of consideration, troubles of all kinds. Personal losses may hurt more for the moment, but so far as the family is concerned—”
“Oh, don’t say so,” cried Marjory. “Papa, I am afraid there are things that hurt a great deal more. I have heard—something about Tom—”
“What about Tom?” he said, turning upon her with an eagerness much unlike his former calm.
“It may not perhaps be so bad as appears. He has had—an accident,” she said, breathless and terrified.