The whole Turnbull family, from the beginnings of things self-
constituted judges of the two Marstons, were not the less
critical of the daughter, that the father had been taken from
her. There was grumbling in the shop every time she ran up to see
Letty, every one regarding her and speaking of her as a servant
neglecting her duty. Yet all knew well enough that she was co-
proprietor of business and stock, and the elder Turnbull knew
besides that, if the lawyer to whose care William Marston had
committed his daughter were at that moment to go into the affairs
of the partnership, he would find that Mary had a much larger
amount of money actually in the business than he.
Of all matters connected with the business, except those of her
own department, Mary was ignorant. Her father had never neglected
his duty, but he had so far neglected what the world calls a
man's interests as to leave his affairs much too exclusively in
the hands of his partner; he had been too much interested in life
itself to look sharply after anything less than life. He
acknowledged no _worldly_ interests at all: either God cared
for his interests or he himself did not. Whether he might not
have been more attentive to the state of his affairs without
danger of deeper loss, I do not care to examine or determine; the
result of his life in the world was a grand success.
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