he was shot at twice. But he was very popular in his own class; what men
call a good fellow, and at that time there was quite a brilliant group of
disreputable women here; one could not help hearing things, for the married
women here have always been great gossips. Well--you may as well know
it--it may have the same effect on you that it did on Ballinger and Geary,
who are the most abstemious of men--he drank and gambled and had too much
to do with those unspeakable women....

"Nevertheless, he made a great deal of money for a long time, and if he
hadn't gambled (not only in gambling houses and in private but in stocks),
he would have left a large fortune. As it is, poor darling, you will only
have this house and about six thousand a year. Father was quite well off
when Sally and I married and Ballinger and Geary went to New York after
marrying the Lyman girls, who were such belles out here when they paid us a
visit in the nineties. They had money of their own and father gave the boys
a hundred thousand each. He gave the same to Sally and me when we married.
But when you came along, or rather when you were ten, and he died--well, he
had run through nearly everything, and had lost his grip. Mother got her
share of the community property, and of course she had this house and her
share of the Ballinger estate--not very much."



VII


"Why didn't mother keep father at home and make him behave himself?"

"Mother did everything a good woman could do."