secret with her life--at the same time painfully sensible that
the bad news would be all over Redcross the next day, or the next after
that. "I thought it would be better to tell you myself; nobody in the
house knows anything of it yet, except your father and me."

"But what is it, mother; you have not told us?" Annie urged; while Mrs.
Millar sank down in a low wicker chair, and her daughter Dora
instinctively stooped over her, and began to set her vagrant cap right.

"Never mind my cap, my love," said Mrs. Millar hurriedly, and then she
grew incoherent. "What does it matter, when perhaps I may not long have
a cap to wear."

Annie and Dora stared at each other in consternation. Was their mother
going out of her senses?

"It is the bank, Carey's Bank," said Mrs. Millar, recovering herself,
"Oh dear! I am afraid it is in a very bad way."

"Is that it?" cried Annie vaguely but gravely, opening wide her brown
eyes. "Is it going to fail?" She, too, spoke of the bank as if it were a
responsible being.

"Annie, Annie, take care what you say. Girls are so heedless. I tell you
it is very dangerous to make such broad statements. You do not know what
harm you may do by a single word when you are so childishly outspoken."
Mrs. Millar felt bound even yet to give her own words the timid
qualification, though she was forced to add the next moment, "Your
father has suspected things were going wrong for some time, and spoken
of his suspicions to me repeatedly. He has just come back from a private
meeting of the Redcross shareholders. He says in consequence of some
additional losses in South America, I think, and inability to realize
capital there, the bank cannot meet two or three heavy calls at home. I
daresay I am not telling you rightly, for I don't understand business,
and I don't suppose you do."

"I understand so far, that if this is not failure, I don't know what
is," said Annie.

"Don't, Annie," said Dora; "let mother tell us in her own way; it is not
easy for her, it is a dreadful misfortune."

"You may say that, Dora," exclaimed her mother. "Your father does not
believe the bank can hold out for another week; it may stop payment
to-morrow, since there are rumours afloat which will destroy what credit
it has left."

"Will no other bank help it?" cried Annie shrewdly.

"I believe not," said Mrs. Millar dolefully.

"Then there will be a run, like what one has read of in similar
circumstances--a rush of the people,