“I think it could be done for three thousand dollars,” he remarked. “Which means, of course, it can’t be done at all.”
Orissa took the paper without replying and pondered over it for several days. She was only seventeen, but had inherited her father’s clear, business-grasping mind, and would have been an essentially practical girl had not her youth and inexperience lent her some illusions that time would dissipate.
Stephen posed as the “head of the family;” but Orissa really directed its finances, poor Mrs. Kane being so helpless that her children never depended upon her for counsel but on the contrary kept all business matters from her, lest she worry over them. The one maid employed in the bungalow served Mrs. Kane almost exclusively, while Orissa always had devoted much time to her mother, who had been stricken blind at the time of her daughter’s birth.
One evening, when brother and sister were in the garden together, the girl said:
“I believe I have discovered a plan that will permit you to build your airship. What is it to be, Steve; a biplane or a monoplane?”
“Let me hear your plan,” was the eager reply.
“Well, I’ve been to see Mr. Wentworth, and he will advance us fifteen hundred on our orange crop, by discounting the price ten per cent. He came and looked at the trees and said they were safe to pay us at least twenty-three hundred dollars next February.”
“But—Orissa!—how could we live, with our income cut down that way—to a mere seven or eight hundred dollars?”
“I’m going to work,” she said quietly. “I’m tired of doing nothing but dig around the garden and cook. Mamma doesn’t need me, at least during the day, so I’m going into business.”
Steve smiled.