“Forty dollars!” cried Victoria, while Honor’s feelings prevented her for the moment from finding words, and Peter gave utterance to a prolonged whistle of astonishment. “You don’t mean, Katherine, that you have actually spent forty dollars on that?”
“I do,” said Katherine, with an assumption of boldness that she was far from feeling. “Only forty dollars. I assure you it is the cheapest thing I ever saw. I never dreamed of being able to get a decent one for less than fifty at the lowest—and when we are making money with it, you will thank me.”
“But how are we to make money with it?” asked Victoria, while Peter laughed with malicious glee. He had been so often remonstrated with himself for various misdemeanors that he was glad to see his chief critic undergoing the same unpleasant experience. “Do you know how to use it?”
“No, not yet; but that is easily learned. The man offered to give me a lesson, but I was in a hurry, and so he said I could come in any time. He showed me some books on the subject, which I bought, and I can easily puzzle it out myself, I think. It will be something to do in the evening.”
“Have you paid for it, or did you have it charged, too?”
It was Honor who asked the question. She had not spoken for some time, and her voice had the same note which Katherine, who was susceptible to voices, had remarked upon before.
“I paid for it,” she replied. “That is what I wanted the ready money for. I saw it in the window of a typewriter place as I was on my way to the furniture store. I knew I should have to pay ‘cash down’ for it, as they didn’t know me there, while they did at the furniture place. I hope you think I did right, girls. I hope you agree with me.”
“I think,” said Honor, turning slowly and looking at her sister,—“I think you are the most foolish and the most extravagant person I ever saw or heard of. The idea of your spending forty dollars on a typewriter, when we are so poor we can scarcely buy our food, and it was just as much as we could do to scrape the forty dollars together for you to take to Boston to buy the schoolroom furniture with. Oh, that we had never let you go! Can the thing be taken back?”
“No,” said Katherine, shortly.
“Why not?”