“Do you mean me alone?” asked Peter.
“Yes. You see I have the violets to attend to, and lots of things in the house. We have so much dusting and all that sort of thing to do, now that we have only one maid, and with all I have to study, I really don’t think I can undertake anything more. Couldn’t you read up about them, and find out all you can? You might make a good deal that way.”
A gleam of something like interest had come into Peter’s hitherto depressed-looking face. It quickly faded, however.
“It’s such a little thing,” said he.
“Why, it doesn’t really amount to anything. What is raising mushrooms? Anybody could do that. I want to do something big. If I were only a man, now, I could support you all.”
“Yes, I know you could,” rejoined Victoria, quickly, “and it would be too lovely for anything; but you will be a man some day, Peter, and then you can do it, and in the meantime it seems as if the little things would count. And mushrooms are not so little, either. I mean the raising of them. You might be able to make a good deal that way, and in other gardening.”
“They’d call me a mushroom, I suppose,” said Peter, gloomily, after he had reviewed the situation for a few moments in silence.
“What do you mean?”
“A mushroom, or perhaps a toadstool. More likely a toadstool.”