"We'll manage it this way. The furniture and the silver and my jewels must all be sold, of course; that's easy. But even after we've done that, there'll still be a great big burden to carry, I suppose?"
"Pretty big, I'm afraid, for your shoulders."
"Oh, we'll pay it every bit in the end. We won't go bankrupt. You'll go back to the railroad on a salary, and we'll begin to pinch on the spot."
"Yes, but times are hard and salaries are low."
"Anyway they're salaries, there's that much to be said for them. And while we're pinching as hard as we can pinch, we'll move over to Church Hill and rent two or three rooms in the old house with the enchanted garden. All the servants will have to go except Aunt Euphronasia, who couldn't go very far, poor thing, because she's rheumatic and can't stand on her feet. She can sit still very well, however, and rock the baby, and I'll look after the rooms and get the meals—I'm glad they'll be simple ones—and we'll put by every penny that we can save."
"The mere interest on the debt will take almost as much as we can save. There'll be some arrangement made, of course, and the payments will be easy, but there's one thing I'm determined on, and that is that I'll pay it, every cent, if I live. Then, too, there's chance, you know. Something may turn up—something almost always turns up to a man like myself."
"Well, if it turns up, we'll welcome it with open arms. But in the meantime we'll see if we can't scrape along without it. I'm going over this morning to look for rooms. How soon, Ben, do you suppose they will evict us?"
"Does there exist a woman," I demanded sternly, "who can be humorous over her own eviction?"
"It's better to be humorous over one's own than over one's neighbour's, isn't it? And besides, a laugh may help things, but tears never do. I was born laughing, mamma always said."
"Then laugh on, sweetheart."