"Grandmother," she said at last, after she had sat for some minutes staring straight ahead of her, and looking, as Leicester said, "almost as if she were really thinking." "Grandmother, I think we are old enough now,—at any rate I am,—to know something about our income. How much money do we have a year?"
"That's easily told, my child; since your grandfather's death we have very little. I own the house on Fifty-eighth Street, but from the rent of that I have to pay taxes and repairs. Of course Mr. Lloyd attends to all these matters, and his judgment is always right, but I can't help thinking there is very little profit in that house."
"Wouldn't it be better to sell that house, and invest the money in some other way?" said Dorothy, straightforwardly.
"Mr. Lloyd says not, dearie, and of course he knows. Then besides that, I own the large hotel property which your grandfather bought a few years before he died. But as I cannot rent it, and cannot sell it, it is not only no source of income to me, but it is a great expense."
"Oh, 'Our Domain' up in the mountains," said Dorothy.
"Yes, 'Our Domain'; but I wish it were the Domain of somebody else," said her grandmother.
This hotel property had always been called "Our Domain," by the family and when Mr. Dorrance was alive, had been looked upon as a sort of a joke, but the present view of the situation did not seem at all humorous.
"Never mind," said Leicester, who was always hopeful, "I think it's very nice to own a Domain. It makes us seem like landed proprietors, and some day, who knows, it may prove valuable."