A successful venture

by Ellen Douglas Deland

And the mere assurance that he need not hurry sent Peter to his room within five minutes.

The next day was Sunday. When the Starr family awoke, the clouds were still thick, and the air was heavy with dampness; but by nine o’clock the sun was out, and at service time the day was clear. Peter and his four sisters went to church, as usual, and took their places in the family pew,—Peter at the end where his father had always sat, even on the very Sunday before he died. If the minds of the little group in black were occupied with other thoughts than those suggested by the service, they gave no outward sign of it. In the afternoon they all went to Sunday school as usual,—Honor and Katherine to teach, and the others to be taught; and after it was over Katherine and Victoria stayed to the afternoon service. Honor’s cold forced her to go home, and Peter and Sophy accompanied her.

No one mentioned the subject in which they were all so vitally interested, until the next evening, when they were once more gathered about the parlor fire.

“Now,” said Honor, drawing up a chair, and settling herself as if for the evening, “the time has at last come! I have scarcely been able to wait for night, for every one of you have looked as if you were bristling with ideas all day; but I thought I had better not begin the subject by asking for anything. Suppose we all take turns, beginning with the youngest, and each say what we think will be the quickest and the surest way of making our fortunes.”

But Sophy felt shy at being called upon, and they all insisted that Honor should state her own views first, as she was the eldest. Her idea was to open a boarding-school during the winter, and to take boarders in summer.

“When the place looks so lovely,” said she, “and there would be no necessity if we did that for us to alter our way of living, as regards the table. We should be obliged to have everything very nice if people were boarding here, and that would be such a comfort.”

Katherine approved of a school, though perhaps not a boarding-school, and she thought it would be well for them to have a little time to themselves in summer.

“We shall want to go away for a while to get rested,” she remarked; “to the seashore or the mountains, you know, so we had better not have a houseful of boarders. The school would be better, and I can teach other things in it besides music.”

Victoria inclined towards working the farm in some way, in which Peter agreed with her. She pointed out that boarders in summer would perhaps be hard to procure, and also that it would be impossible to go to the mountains or the sea, as Katherine suggested, and leave the place to take care of itself, even if there were no boarders, and even if they had made enough money to warrant such an expense. On the other hand, the working of the farm presented endless possibilities. There was much good sense in what she said, as Honor and Katherine were forced to admit. They determined to wait, however, before actually deciding upon their future course, until they should see Mr. Abbott; and Honor wrote to him that night, begging him to come to Glen Arden again as soon as it should be convenient, as they wished his advice.

“We have some new ideas,” she wrote, “and we cannot rest until we hear you say they are good ones.”