"He couldn't get into much trouble out there." "Isn't there anything left?" "Oh, the widow will have a little. But the in-laws will have to hunt jobs. One is out in California, isn't he?" The company did not seem able to get away from the topic. Even after they went out to dinner, it echoed to and fro around the table. "I say it's a shame, a crime!" Mr. Buchanan pronounced with confident earnestness. "A man with that sort of family has no right to engage in speculative enterprises without settling a proper sum on his family first. There's his eldest daughter married to an invalid, his youngest daughter engaged to be married to a parson, and neither of his sons showing any business ability." "That's a fact, Oliver," Mr. Stewart nodded. "But you know Anthony always loved deep water." "And now it's his family who have got to swim in it." "He was a most generous man," Pemberton remarked in a milder tone. "I hardly know of a man who's done more first and last for this town, and no one ever had to ask twice for his help in any public enterprise." "Seems to have looked after other people's affairs better'n his own. It's a pity now the boys weren't brought up to business." "That isn't the way nowadays. He was always ready for a gamble, and she didn't want her sons in the business." From time to time there were feeble efforts to move the talk out of the rut in which it had become fixed. But the minds of most of those about the table were fascinated by the spectacle of ruin so closely presented to them. The picture of a solid, worldly estate crumbling before their eyes stirred their deepest emotions. For the moment it crowded out that other great topic of the new strike in the building trades. Every one at the table held substantially the same views on both these matters, but the ruin of the Crawford fortune was more immediately dramatic than the evils of unionism. "When are you fellows going to start that school, Pemberton?" some one asked at last. "Not until these strikes let up, and there's no telling when that will be. If these labor unions only keep on long enough, they will succeed in killing every sort of enterprise." "Yes, they're ruining business." Then Pemberton, who was seated next to Helen, remarked to her:-- "You will be glad to know, Mrs. Hart, that the trustees have decided not to hand the work over to any institution, at least for the present." "I am so glad of that," she replied. "That's about as far as we have got." Sensitively alive to her former blunder in expressing her wish that her husband might draw the plans for the school, she took this as a hint, and dropped the subject altogether, although she had a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue.