A successful venture

by Ellen Douglas Deland

“Er—not exactly,” faltered Honor, who felt all too surely that she had made a misstep, and perhaps a fatal one. What would their aunt say if she knew that they had owned a typewriter for nearly six months, and that not one of them could make use of it? And she would find it out, she surely would! Why, oh why, had Honor ever given her this superfluous bit of information? Without it she need never have known that there was such a thing in the house.

“Very well, then, I shall not bring my own,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward, rising as she spoke. “On the contrary, I will engage Katherine to be my secretary, and of course she will prefer to use her own machine which she is accustomed to. You tell her, will you, Honor, that I shall pay her an ample salary. And now good-bye, my dear! It will really be very pleasant to be with you all. My love to the others. I am not going to take the train yet. The carriage that is waiting will carry me down to Fordham, where I have a meeting. Good-bye.”

And in a moment she was gone. Honor stood on the piazza, looking at the back of the carriage as it rolled up the avenue. One more week, and then, good-bye, indeed! It would be the end of their careless freedom, their independence, their good times. For although it had been a sad winter in many ways, although they had missed the dear father more than words could express, although the question of money had at times pressed heavily upon them, yet in spite of all they had been happy with one another, they had enjoyed the sense of independence which they had gained from the fact that they were supporting, or trying to support, themselves, and there had been intense satisfaction in the mere feeling that they were earning money. Little though it was, it was theirs by the right of labor, and Honor was proud of it.

To be sure, they should now earn more, for she knew that her aunt would pay them generously; but she saw an endless line of small vexations rising and stretching themselves through the summer, the little trials that are not much in themselves, but which, when they come in rapid succession, are wearing and annoying, to say the least. Katherine, for one, would not brook the interference which was sure to come from her aunt. And what would she say to being obliged to give up her room, and to being engaged as secretary and typewriter?

Depressed and disturbed though she was feeling, Honor laughed aloud at the thought of the wonders which Katherine was expected to perform upon her writing-machine. As far as her present knowledge went she might just as well be required to translate something from the Sanscrit.

And then, Honor, after one more look across the lawn where her father’s dear trees were in full leaf now, and the grass was green, and the robins were hopping about in ecstasy over the coming of spring, left the piazza and went back to the schoolroom. She determined to say nothing of these plans of her Aunt Sophia’s until Victoria should come home. It was curious, said Honor to herself, that they were all growing to lean upon Victoria.

Therefore, it was not until the afternoon, when they had a few moments of leisure before Katherine should go to one of her music pupils, that Honor imparted to them her dire intelligence.

It had precisely the effect which she had feared. Katherine flatly declined to give up her room to her aunt, and declared that it was an imposition to have her come there at all. She, for one, refused to endure it. As to acting as her secretary, it was out of the question. Besides, she could not use the typewriter. Why had Honor ever led Aunt Sophia to suppose that she could? Honor had drawn them into this scrape; now she must get them out of it. She need not have told Aunt Sophia that they owned a typewriter.

Katherine walked up and down the shady end of the piazza, looking very tall and extremely angry. Indignation was written in every line of her beautiful face. She had, oddly enough, the perfectly straight features of the aunt whom she did not particularly love; but her eyes and hair were very dark and her forehead was low and broad. It would have annoyed her extremely to be told that she looked like Mrs. Wentworth Ward, who, nevertheless, was a handsome woman.

“I see no way out of it,” said Honor. She was sitting in the hammock, and swung herself to and fro while she watched Katherine’s rapid movements. Victoria had perched herself upon the railing of the piazza, and was looking out across the lawn.