“Will you promise not to exclaim?”
“It couldn’t possibly surprise us after your other suggestions,” remarked Katherine, gloomily. “I shall be quite resigned, even if you tell us we are to live on bread and water and wear ready-made clothes at five dollars a suit.”
“We might do worse,” said Victoria, “but this is quite different. We have so many things” (she looked about the room as she spoke), “why—indeed, girls, I scarcely dare say it—why can’t we sell something?”
There was a moment of silence. Honor was the first to find her voice.
“Sell something!” she exclaimed. “Sell what?”
“Oh, a picture or two, or some books, or a piece of silver. Or isn’t there any jewelry?”
“Why, Victoria, you can’t really mean it?” cried Katherine, in an incredulous voice. “I can’t think that you really mean it.”
“Sell our family heirlooms?” exclaimed Honor, starting to her feet and gazing at her younger sister with the air of a tragedy queen. “Sell the books and the pictures that father collected with so much pride? Sell the silver which belonged to our great-great-grandmother? Victoria, are you perfectly crazy?”
“No,” said Victoria, stoutly, “not at all so, but I knew you would take it in that way. Of course, I don’t mean the family things, but I mean some of the books, or those etchings that are in the portfolio. I know well enough how dearly father loved them, but he certainly loved us more, and if he were here now and knew how poor we are, he would be the first to say that we must do something to get money, and that we had better sell such useless things as those etchings are. They don’t do us any good, for we never look at them, and he would far rather have us sell them than owe money. You know father had a perfect horror of unpaid bills.”
Victoria spoke rapidly, for she had become excited. The opposition manifested by her sisters only served to strengthen her belief in the common sense of her suggestion, and she felt confident that her plan was a good one.