“I know of some one right now,” eagerly put in Dick, the promoted office boy. “It is a family who have been driven from Paris by the war. They have been living there for years—got oodlums of money and no place to spend it now, poor things! They want a furnished house for six months with privilege of renewing the lease for a year.”
“Oh, please, could you send them to me or me to them right off?”
“Yes, Miss Carter, that’s easy! If you go home, I’ll have the folks up there in an hour.”
“How kind you are!”
“Not a bit of it! I’m so glad I happened to know about them—and now you will be saved an agent’s fee.”
“How much do you think we should ask for our house?” said Douglas, appealing to both young men.
“Well, that house is as good a one as there is in Richmond for its size,” said Mr. Lane, the elder. “I know, because I helped on it. There is not one piece of defective material in the whole building. Even the nails were inspected. If it had been on Franklin Street, I’d say one hundred a month, unfurnished, with all the baths it has in it; but since it is not on Franklin, I believe one hundred, furnished, would be a fair price.”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be fine, Douglas?” spoke Helen for the first time. She had been very quiet while these business conferences had been going on. “That will be a whole lot of money. Now we need not feel so poverty stricken.”
“Certainly families do live on less,” and the young man smiled. “I think Mr. Carter usually takes out about six hundred a month for his household expenses—of course, that’s not counting when he buys a car. I know it is none of my business, but I am very much interested to know what you young ladies are going to do with yourselves. If I can be of any assistance, you must call on me.”
“Oh, we’ve got the grandest scheme! I thought of it myself, so I am vastly proud of it. We are going up to Albemarle County, where Father owns a tract of land right on the side of a mountain, and there we are going to spend the summer and take boarders and expect to make a whole lot of money.”