I did, and I believed that the world would yet confess it, but just then my mind was set upon the vending of my own plebeian wares. The trouble about Dave had been brought home to me afresh. I almost believed in his innocence, and the overthrow of his prospects in life and his uncongenial toil seemed suddenly more than I could bear. I was determined that his debt to Ned Carruthers should be paid at once; he should at least be relieved from that humiliation.
And on that morning I was resolved that I would, if it were possible, repair the family fortunes. If literature and art could not do it, then sausages must!
“We’ll all go,” said Octavia, as she made her toilet. It is generally Octavia who settles things. “And, oh, I do hope that poor child isn’t going to be altogether disappointed about her pictures!”
Estelle and Alice Yorke were eager to share the trading expedition. Estelle was evidently glad to postpone the ordeal of facing her art-editor.
In the great establishment where the Groundnut Hill sage cheese and quince jelly had found its market I received a most unexpectedly cordial welcome. The firm would give me a much larger order for the coming season, it would be glad to have other jellies and preserves of the Groundnut Hill brand; also cream cheeses, and butter in my tiny, clover-stamped pats.
I was paid for my last remittance of goods and I pocketed the delightful, little, rustling slip—the girls looking on—with an even keener thrill of pleasure than I had felt in taking it from the envelope in the Palmyra post-office. It was twice as large that was one reason, I had grown very mercenary. It was almost half enough to pay Dave’s debt.
“I knew it was a sordid world, but I didn’t think it was such a greedy one,” said Octavia, as we went out of the shop. “In Palmyra we don’t think so much of good things to eat.”
I had made bold to ask the man who was so polite to me about a possible chance to sell my sausages, and he gave me a letter to a firm in a great market. And down to the market we all trooped, Estelle with her large portfolio under her arm and a cloud of anxiety still upon her lovely face. I was light-hearted; never before had a check meant so much to me; and the others professed to think no scorn of sausages. Alice Yorke even regretted that Peggy Carruthers had not come, too; Peggy would have enjoyed it so much.
But I drew the line at Peggy Carruthers. She seemed too dainty and too like a society girl to condescend to the selling of farm products. Moreover, the feeling she had shown—perhaps not unreasonably—about Estelle’s little flare-up, still rankled in my mind. Estelle had seemed scarcely to observe it; she was too much absorbed in her troubles and her little will-o’-the-wisp of hope to have any thought for Peggy Carruthers.
They were only moderately civil at the first place in the market; they sent me around with my letter to several firms.