Then the Cub brought his suit case, and, picking up Pam, went to carry out Lucy’s suggestion, while she, after watching him go, said half aloud:—
“He’s all right if you only understand him. I’ll give Brooke a hint. I shouldn’t wonder if this smashup will give him a push and his chance—for somebody has got to go to work in this family, and pretty quick, too, according to father’s ideas.
“Heigh-ho, I wonder what Tom Brownell will have to say in the _Daily Forum_ to-morrow. Will he make a sensation column of us,—I mean of Brooke and her object lesson,—or will he turn his back on the devil and give out a simple, dignified statement regardless of making copy? No, I don’t wonder either, I’ll gamble he’s straight as a plumb-line. Gracious, what did I do with those keys?” and Lucy began feeling in the gold chain bag that hung from her belt, as, hearing Brooke leave her father’s room, she went to join her.
The _Daily Forum_ not only corrected its insinuation of the previous day, but printed a further statement, the sincerity and judiciousness of which at once made the financial disaster of Adam Lawton secondary to his physical collapse. This allowed the numerous family friends and acquaintances the chance to offer sympathy with perfect good taste, which in the conventional society of the Whirlpool usually takes the place of more spontaneous warm-heartedness.
For many days a stream of callers came and went from the St. Hilaire, some content merely to leave a card with inquiries, others asking for Mrs. Lawton or Brooke, emphasizing their offer of “doing something” with a hand-shake, but asking no prying questions. Still others, as “intimate friends” of the family, as the days wore on and it was definitely known that though the creditors might in time receive dollar for dollar, there would be nothing over, not only called, but stayed and mingled advice and chiding with their verbal sympathy.
“Reduced to absolute beggars,” was the term that Mrs. Ashton, Lucy Dean’s aunt, applied to the Lawtons when discussing the affair at a luncheon she was giving, where all the guests were women of Mrs. Lawton’s class and set, though few of them had her gentle breeding, “and if Mrs. Lawton and quixotic Brooke had not had such ridiculous scruples as to what belonged to whom, quite a lump might have been rescued for them, my brother says.”