“Julie! do say something!” exclaimed her sister. “I can’t bear to have you so still.”
“I am thinking, dear; trying to grasp what it all means.”
“Julie, what can we do?”
“Do? Well, we will do something.”
“Of course we will, old girl.” Hester left the window, and crossing the room put her arms around her sister. “The two main things are to take care of Dad and earn our own living. We couldn’t be dependent on Dr. Ware, Julie. Do you suppose he meant he wanted to give us a home and everything?”
“I don’t know, Hester. He is so generous and so fond of Dad I believe he would; but that would not be right. I wonder what we can do to be self-supporting? We have the usual accomplishments, and I suppose we have average intelligence, don’t you?” she asked, anxiously.
“I would back the intelligence against the accomplishments any day,” said Hester, sagely. “We have not had the usual sort of bringing up, so we can’t do the usual thing.”
“Like teaching, you mean, or—or things like that? No, we can’t. We are not trained or qualified for any sort of position, and only one of us could work away from home anyway, for we can’t both leave Daddy.”
Hester’s forehead was creased into little wrinkles of perplexity. “If only I were a man!” she exclaimed, “I might stand some chance—I know how to do such a lot of mannish things. Why, I could be an engineer if I were put to it, Julie! You know I’ve run the engine attached to ‘The Hustle’ many a time; the men used to let me do it.” She drew in her breath with a little gasp of remembrance. “As it is,” she continued, “I suppose I’ll have to be a companion or something equally commonplace and ladylike,” she ended in a tone of disgust.
“I suppose so,” agreed her sister reluctantly; “but, dear, the worst of that is it will separate us, and I don’t believe either one of us could stand that.” Julie’s lip quivered. “Isn’t it humiliating to have such a feeling of utter helplessness?”