Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/280

 Mr. Spencer did not go to his office in town, and Mary Anne was not surprised to be summoned to him in the library. She went, prepared to render some chance service, or answer some question about household affairs. To her consternation she found Tom there, looking very pale and desperate, standing before his father, whose face was stern and lowering.

"Well, Mary Anne!" was her father's greeting. "Here's a pretty state of things!"

"Why, Father. What's the matter?"

"Matter enough! Tom's been gambling in stocks, and owes a thousand dollars, and there's nobody to blame for it but you."

"Father!" Tom remonstrated.

"Hold your tongue, Tom," cried his father, hotly. "It's exactly as I say. If Mary Anne hadn't been an absolute fool, she would have known better than to lend you money. I don't count that among his debts," James Spencer added, bitterly. "It serves you right to lose it, and I, for one, shall not make it up to you."

"But, Father," Tom began again.

"Hold your tongue, Tom. Do you hear me? Tom's been a fool, too," he went on, turning to his daughter; "but he has at least had the manliness to own up. He's not quite lost to all sense of decency yet. But he's headed straight down hill. He's got a taste for gambling, and if he goes straight to the deuce, I swear there's nobody to blame but you."