"A month, Sara, a month; surely you didn't expect to pay so little for a year!"
"Why, yes, I did; I'm afraid I'm dreadfully ignorant, Miss Prue."
"As bad as a chicken just out of the shell," shaking her head with comical lugubriousness. "Go to Boston, indeed! you'd starve to death on a doorstep, all four of you, I can see you now, laid out like a row of assorted pins, for all the world. Humph! Boston, indeed!" with bridling earnestness. "Besides, what business has that Glendwing, or whatever his high-falutin name may be, to mix himself up with our affairs? I declare, Sara, I've a great mind to move the whole lot of you down here, and take care of you myself. I would, too, if it wasn't for Polly; but she'd quarrel with the children all day long, and make life a burden."
Sara laughed, but looked disappointed too.
"I see it's not to be thought of now, Miss Prue; but I hoped I could work there, and indeed I don't know what there is to do here."
"Well, there's that, of course, and I'll have to own that Cousin Nancy Prime, who lives in Hartford, always says, when I talk so, that there's no place where the poor are so well looked after as in a large city; but it seems to me just like a howling wilderness, and, besides, who wants to be looked after? I don't, nor you either; we want to have our own means, and be independent of charity."
"Yes; but it won't take so very long to finish my little capital, then what will I do if there is no work to be got? and you know there isn't any here."
"Advertise for summer boarders," said Miss Prue brilliantly. "I don't know why people shouldn't come to Killamet, as well as to fifty other places along this coast. It's only because when they get here there's no place to put them in, or, possibly, they haven't discovered our great merits yet. Our beach, and the scenery about it, are finer than those of half the places they throng, and what if they do have to come either by stage or boat the last few miles! It gives all who don't consider time, and are only off for an outing, so much the more variety. If you advertise as I've seen people do before now, you could make it seem a perfect paradise, and not be half so far out of the way, either."
"I never thought of that. I take boarders? How queer!"
"Well, everything's queer, that is about you; my life has been humdrum enough, we all know; but you seem marked out for exceptional fates—and fortunes perhaps."