Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/253

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN "We all know," said Mrs. Parley, "that you have had misfortunes, and that they have been of a peculiar kind, and none of them owing to your own fault."

"We can't agree exactly to that," interpolated Miss Shott, "but I won't interrupt."

"We all know," continued Mrs. Perley, "that it was a great loss and disappointment to you not to be able to get down to Valparaiso and settle your affairs there, for we are aware that you need whatever money is due you from that quarter. And we understand, too, what a great blow it was to you to be shipwrecked, and lose all your baggage except a hand-bag."

Miss Shott was about to say something here, but Mrs. Hembold touched her on the arm, and she waited.

"It grieves us very much," continued the minister's wife, "to think that our dear friend and neighbor should come home from her wanderings and perils and privations, and find herself in what must be, although we do not wish to pry into your private affairs, something of an embarrassed condition. We have all stayed at home with our friends and our families, and we have had no special prosperity, but neither have we met with losses, and it grieves us to think that you, who were once as prosperous as any of us, should now feel—I should say experience—in any manner the pressure of privation."

"I don't understand," said Mrs. Cliff, sitting up very straight in her chair. "Privation? What does that mean?"

"It may not be exactly that," said Mrs. Perley, quickly, "and we all know very well, Mrs. Cliff, that you are naturally sensitive on a point like this. But you have come back shipwrecked and disappointed in 239