“Well, the first expense we shall have to meet is for garden tools and some sort of a wagon. Mr. Brook has an old horse for which he has little use, and he will be glad to have us use it for a while, and pay him nothing but its keep.”
“My son, we must try to stand upon our own feet. We are not to depend upon Mr. Brook as if we had no independence at all. There is a small sum of money, you know,—a few hundred dollars. We are to use all of it that is necessary in making this experiment a success. Go on, dear.”
“As much as is necessary, Motherkin, but no more. This is no especial benevolence on our patron’s part. He is as good and generous as he can be, but he is also wise. He wants us to keep our self-respect and his, at the same time. Well, this way of getting the use of a horse is quite common among country people. I have inquired and satisfied myself that it is so. He hasn’t a cow to work for its keep, so that we shall have to buy. But—”
“Oh, Roland, you are so slow! Listen to me, Motherkin! I, Beatrice Beckwith, who never earned a penny in her life—but once, a flower-girling!—am going to be one of the bread-winners! True, true, true!”
“Why, Bonny! what do you mean? And how happy you seem!”
“Well, I should think I am happy! Wasn’t I the very bottom and beginning of this whole country business? Didn’t I go a talking to my dear old gentleman, and didn’t he fall in with the country notion, hot foot? Then it rests on me to make the thing a ‘go;’ and I mean to do it.”
“It rests upon us all equally, Beatrice.”
“Well, I have a situation. I am a private secretary, if you please!—I mean, if you will please! That was why I was so anxious to shorten up the music practice and take the other lessons at the Y. W. C. A. rooms during the last three months. Mr. Brook divulged the scheme to me in one of his letters, which you didn’t ask to see and I didn’t offer to show you. And we have kept it a secret from you on purpose to be a delightful surprise to you now. I am to have a dollar a day for my services. Think of that! I, the harum-scarum, am going to settle down into a regular money-grubber.”
“Why does he need a private secretary?” demanded Isabelle, rather anxiously.
“To help him put his collection of bugs and things into shape. You must know that our Mr. Chidly Brook is a known naturalist,—the one whose papers we have liked so much, over the signature of ‘Windsor.’”