Katherine sprang from her seat.
“Never!” she said. “Honor, you are too absurd. I tell you, we are making money with the school and the music scholars. As for the typewriter, you are too disagreeable! Of course it will pay in time. I—I haven’t had time to learn to use it yet.”
She dared not add that her ardor had been somewhat lessened by a small paragraph which she had chanced to see in the newspaper. It was to the effect that the use of the typewriter unfitted the fingers for the piano, that they were apt to become stiff and to lose their accustomed skill. It was only a newspaper paragraph, to be sure, but it had frightened Katherine. She even acknowledged to herself that she regretted her purchase, but she had no intention of making this known to her sisters.
And in the meantime, how should the bills be paid?
CHAPTER VII.
VICTORIA GOES IN SEARCH OF FUNDS.
Honor thought over the subject during the day and decided that they must hold a council of war. Some means must be decided upon for paying the bills. It was precisely one month since they had undertaken to support themselves, and already they were in difficulty. It would be humiliating to be forced to appeal so soon to Mr. Abbott for help, and yet they would far rather ask him than their Aunt Sophia. But perhaps there was some other way.
The school bills had been sent out,—they were issued in advance,—but as yet there had been no response, and even when there was, the amount would help very little. Six children at twenty dollars each for the term, one hundred and twenty dollars. The household bills for the month of November amounted to what seemed a large sum in these straitened times,—and they did not include the one for the school furniture,—and the money which they should receive from the pupils would be for the next four months.
There were the music scholars, to be sure, but they were but five, and Katherine received only fifty cents an hour. Mushrooms and violets, though a paying industry in theory, had not yet begun to show practical results. Six hundred dollars a year came to them, as they supposed, from their father’s estate, and there were five persons to be clothed and fed. Had they been foolish, after all, not to accept their aunt’s offer? Honor, sitting in the western window of the parlor that afternoon in December, while she waited for her sisters to join her there, wondered if they had made a mistake.
There had been a light fall of snow that day, just enough to whiten the ground and to rest lightly upon the branches of the cedar trees. The sun was shining now, shortly before setting, and the world looked very beautiful. But Honor was in no mood to enjoy the prospect. She felt an overburdening sense of responsibility. She was the eldest, the family were practically left in her care, and she missed her father more than words could express. Was she doing right to refuse the help which her father’s sister had offered?
Presently the front door opened, and Victoria walked in. She was singing, to a tune of her own invention, her favorite quotation from Shakespeare: