“My dear child!” cried Honor and Katherine with one voice. “Surely you don’t think we ought to starve ourselves?”
“No, of course not, but we really needn’t have quite so many things. Salad every day at dinner, for instance, and olives. And we don’t need preserves always for lunch, nor such a lot of cake made, and—oh, a great many things. When I was staying at the Carsons’ last year I noticed that they didn’t have nearly so many things as we do, and yet there was always enough, and everything was very good.”
“I hate the idea of a skimpy table,” said Honor. “You know father always liked everything to be very nice. Oh no, my dear! Most of your ideas are good ones, but I really don’t think we ought to starve ourselves.”
“Nor I either,” said Katherine. “I think Honor is right there. Nothing is more horrible than the idea of not having enough food on the table.”
“But I don’t mean that,” persisted Victoria. “I only mean that we don’t need olives and salad and preserves to keep us from being hungry.”
“The preserves don’t cost us a cent but the sugar,” said Honor. “We raise the currants and the pears and the cherries on the place, and even some of the strawberries, so there is no extravagance in turning them into preserves and eating them.”
“That suggests another idea!” exclaimed Victoria. “We might sell preserves at the Woman’s Exchange or somewhere. To be sure, we have always paid a woman to do ours, but we might learn to do them ourselves, and make some money that way.”
The girls discussed long and earnestly the new aspect of affairs, and their many plans for bettering their fortune, and Sophy sat up unnoticed until past her usual bedtime, so absorbed were they all in the unlooked-for problem which had been presented to them that afternoon.
Peter did not appear again, but they heard him whistling in the workshop when they at last went upstairs to bed. Victoria went to the door and found him idly sharpening some tools, apparently giving little thought to the work. She wanted him to go to bed, but she knew that if she told him so, he would probably prolong his labors until far into the night.
“We have been talking it all over, Peter,” said she gaily, “and we are going to think it out by ourselves over Sunday; and then Monday night we are going to tell each other how we want most to set about it,—making our fortunes, I mean. I am going to bed, for I can think better in the dark. I don’t suppose I shall go to sleep for ages. You needn’t hurry, but please put out the light in the back hall when you do come.”