Poor grandma! she wept, occasionally, childish tears, because Dave worked in the shipyard, but his disgrace remained only as a dim, dark cloud in the background of her memory. But we were afraid of the effect that it might have upon her to know that the shipyard was to be sold.
While things were in this state and Dave still lingered, unaccountably, in the city, sending no definite news of his reasons, Estelle had her modest little success which I fear we none of us thought much about. Her drawings were accepted and more were ordered for the same magazine. It was hard to see the child’s radiant delight overshadowed by the family troubles.
She said that the check seemed large because it made her a responsible member of society, but small because it would not save the shipyard!
But the order for more was the main thing, as I—a business woman!—assured her. Who could say what this opportunity might bring forth in time to come?
But there was no time—no time to wait! Estelle cried breathlessly. She seemed to feel more than any of us the loss of grandfather’s old business—more than any, except perhaps Cyrus.
“It is because I can’t help thinking that things might have been different—Cyrus might have followed the profession for which he was better fitted if there had not been Dave and me to be taken care of,—‘the aliens,’ as you used to——”
I stopped her mouth with my hand. “Aliens! did we ever?” I cried. “It is the best of us that we call you now—ask Octavia! And you said, yourself, that Cyrus was never so well fitted to be a minister as now!”
But grandpa’s shipyard—must it go?
Nothing would comfort Estelle. And she was out of patience with Dave, whom she pictured to herself—and even to me although she was so loyal—as being beguiled by pretty teas at Peggy Carruthers’ studio. She even asked him in one of her letters how Miss Bocock’s storks came on!—when he had never even mentioned Peggy Carruthers or her studio!
Loveday sang about her work the hymn which she always fell back upon in troublous times: