Rachel started.
“Why, sister!--sell? Oh, no, we couldn’t do that!” she shuddered.
“But what can we do?”
“Do?--why lots of things!” Rachel’s lips came together with a snap. “It’s coming berry time, and there’s our chickens, and the garden did beautifully last year. Then there’s your lace work and my knitting-- they bring something. Sell? Oh--we couldn’t do that!” And she abruptly left the room and went out into the yard. There she lovingly trained a wayward vine with new shoots going wrong, and gloated over the rosebushes heavy with crimson buds.
But as the days and weeks flew by and September drew the nearer, Rachel’s courage failed her. Berries had been scarce, the chickens had died, the garden had suffered from drought, and but for their lace and knitting work, their income would have dwindled to a pitiful sum indeed. Ralph had been gone all summer; he had asked to go camping and fishing with some of his school friends. He was expected home a week before the college opened, however.
Tabitha grew more and more restless every day. Finally she spoke.
“Rachel, we’ll have to sell--there isn’t any other way. It would bring a lot,” she continued hurriedly, before her sister could speak, “and we could find some pretty rooms somewhere. It wouldn’t be so very dreadful!”
“Don’t, Tabitha! Seems as though I couldn’t bear even to speak of it. Sell?--oh, Tabitha!” Then her voice changed from a piteous appeal to one of forced conviction.
“We couldn’t get anywhere near what it’s worth, Tabitha, anyway. No one here wants it or can afford to buy it for what it ought to bring. It is really absurd to think of it. Of course, if I had an offer--a good big one--that would be quite another thing; but there’s no hope of that.”
Rachel’s lips said “hope,” but her heart said “danger,” and the latter was what she really meant. She did not know that but two hours before, a stranger had said to a Fairtown lawyer: