“I’d say we’d spoiled her enough—she doesn’t need any more.”
“Isolde, you simply don’t want to understand me! Goodness knows I preach contentment the loudest—but— Are we going to live like this all our lives? Look at us, huddled up here, now, because the Saturdays belong to the League. Issy, you and I can go on because we got broken in to it years ago. Vick won’t, of course—” (flashing a smile at the disinterested Victoria) “but little Sid—She’s fifteen now. She has two more years at Miss Downs’. She may want college—or—or something—different——”
Isolde lifted her shoulders with an impatient shrug. Isolde’s thin shoulders were very expressive and had a way of communicating her thoughts more effectively than mere words. They silenced Trude, now.
“Do you think it’s a kindness to encourage Sid to want things that we simply can’t afford to give her? You ought to know that we can’t live a bit differently—you keep our accounts.”
Trude groaned. In any argument they always came back to that; their poverty was like the old wall outside that closed them around. If poor little Sid dreamed dreams it would be as it had been with her. Isolde was quite right—it might be no kindness to the child to let her want things—like college. Yet, though silenced, Trude was not satisfied; there were surely things one could want that could surmount even the ugly wall of poverty.
Vick broke into the pause.
“While we’re considering Sid, what are we going to do with her this summer? If she’s going to have fits like she had this morning it’ll be pleasant having her round with nothing to do. Of course if Godmother Jocelyn makes good on her promise to take me to Banff I won’t have to worry but—”
“Trude, have you written to Huldah asking her if she can come for July and August? Prof. Deering wrote last week suggesting that I spend the summer with them in their cottage on Lake Michigan. I can more than pay my board by helping Professor Deering with his book and that will relieve Mrs. Deering so that she can play with the children. It will be a change for me—”
“Some change, I’d say,” laughed Vicky. “A crabby professor and an overworked wife and two crying babies—”
“Professor Deering isn’t crabbed at all, Vick; he’s a dear and the babies are adorable and Mrs. Deering wrote that the bungalow is right on the water and that she’s going to reduce the housework to almost nothing.”