“Then I won’t unless I have to.”
“Perhaps my mother can think of a way, only I don’t want to say anything to her, for she will feel badly because she can’t let me have the money, and I know I ought not to ask her for it. I won’t ask, of course, but if I tell it will be the same as asking, and it will make her feel so unhappy if she must say no, she can’t.”
“Then we must try very hard to think of a way without telling anyone. You wouldn’t need so very much, you know, Nettie, for we can have real cheap things like peanuts and gingerbread, or something like that. I believe fifty cents would be enough to spend, and a dollar would be plenty.”
This seemed like a large amount to Nettie, though she did not say so, and the thought of earning that much weighed heavily upon her after Edna had gone home.
Edna’s thoughts, too, were busy all the evening, and she was so absorbed in Nettie’s dilemma that she sat with arms on the table and doing nothing but looking off into space so that at last her father said. “What’s the matter, little girl? You haven’t even asked for your favorite children’s page of my evening paper,” and he handed it over to her.
This was something that Edna always asked for and she took it now with some little interest, and roused herself to look down the columns. Presently she breathed softly. “Oh!” She had seen something which gave her an idea for Nettie, and she went to bed that night full of a hope which she meant her friend should know as soon as possible the next day.
CHAPTER IX
THE PUZZLE