“But it never was done before in the winter; grandpa wouldn’t have allowed it!” I cried.
“Can’t be helped,” said Dave concisely. “See here, don’t you talk to Cyrus about it, nor to any one so that he’ll hear of it, but there’s been a heavy loss. That brig that went down in the great storm off Seguin was nearly all owned here. It was about all we had left, any of us. And through some loose screw in the underwriters there won’t be a cent of insurance. Haven’t you noticed how glum Cyrus has been looking for a few days?”
“I noticed that he was looking glum when I went into the office for the string,” I said. And Dave gave me a quick, quizzical glance.
Then, after a moment, he whistled sharply. “W-h-e-w! what dunces girls are!” he said.
But this was a remark that had somewhat lost its force from long use. As I have said before we are a candid family.
“Poor old Cyrus has a lot on his hands,” he continued seriously. “I don’t think he has much of a head for business, and, if he had, I doubt whether he could keep things from going all wrong as times are now. He ought to have been a minister as he planned.”
“Dave, haven’t you a head for business? Couldn’t you take some of the responsibility?” I said eagerly. In the first moment of dismay I didn’t think of the poverty that menanced us but only of the family honor, which seemed to me to be centred in the shipbuilding business.
“If I had a head for business I am hardly in a position, just now, to offer my services as a responsible head of the firm!” said Dave dryly. And he left me to go to his own room, humming a light air that Alice Yorke sang.
The sense of misfortune deepened upon me suddenly. I heard the wolf at the door and felt as if his gaunt length were slinking up the stairs behind me, as I went to my room.
I sat down upon the edge of my bed with coat and hat still on and my practical mind slipped away from the mystery of Dave’s wickedness and from Rob’s pitiful condition, and even from the family honor as involved in the shipbuilding business, to the possibility of adding gilt-edged butter to the already famous sage cheese and preserves from Groundnut Hill Farm.