It was on business, he said, folding it up in his wallet.

He received several of these business letters from time to time, and I noticed that they always made him silent and moody.
The fact is, my father's banking-house was not thriving.

The unlooked-for failure of a firm largely indebted to him had crippled "the house." When the Captain imparted this information to me I didn't trouble myself over the matter.

I supposed--if I supposed anything--that all grown-up people had more or less money, when they wanted it.

Whether they inherited it, or whether government supplied them, was not clear to me.