Ellen Douglas Deland

“ And what did you say was the name of the book, Honor?”
“I doubt if you have ever heard of it, Aunt Sophia,” said Honor, as she drew it forth from its hiding-place. “The name of it—”
“Oh, please don’t stop to discuss books!” cried Katherine. “There is something else far more important to be talked about. We don’t want to go to Boston to live, Aunt Sophia. We don’t want to be your secretary and dust your bric-á-brac. We don’t want to go to boarding-school.”
Mrs. Wentworth Ward looked at her calmly.
“My dear, that makes no particular difference,” said she. “We cannot always do what we wish. ”

“ Victoria sat down in the shadow near one of the windows and looked out into the night. Her room was next to that of her aunt, and over the dining-room. Beneath her window was the shrubbery in which Katherine had heard the suspicious sounds a short time since. Beyond lay the flower garden, the beds bathed in the moonlight, and the roses lifting their heads to catch the dew. On the other side of the flower garden was the vegetable patch, and beyond that again the pasture and the woods. ”

“ When she returned she announced to them that she had bought not only six small desks with chairs to match, but also a larger desk for Honor, a map of the world to hang upon the wall, and a blackboard.
“You know it is really important to have all these things,” said she. “A schoolroom without a map would be like bread without butter, and this is the cheapest and the most complete thing you ever saw. The United States on one side, and the whole world on the other, and only a dollar. And you needn’t shake your head over the desk for Honor, Victoria! ”

“ The bustle which her coming had caused had scarcely subsided before supper was announced, and then had ensued the excitement about Peter. Now, at half-past eight, she had requested the attendance of Katherine and Victoria in her room while she unpacked and settled herself for the summer.
“I want to talk over your affairs,” said she. “Now that I am really here I wish to be right in your midst. What have you been living on? How much have you made in that ridiculous school and those senseless violets? Why people should spend their money on violets I can’t imagine. They only fade.” ”

“ Wentworth Ward was to arrive at Glen Arden, and which Peter spent in the woods, Roger Madison came home on an early train from Boston and invited his sister to go out on the river with him. Although Margaret was fully ten years older than himself, and therefore had been grown up when he was still a small boy, she had always been his dearest companion. They rode and drove and fished together, they played and sang, they read the same books and loved the same pictures, and the pleasure which came to one was deprived of half its value if it were not shared by the other. ”

“ Madison would come and talk to him,” suggested Katherine.
“We can’t ask him to,” said Honor, quickly. “We must never ask him to do a thing. He would be the very one, I’ve no doubt, for Peter likes him, and he was the one who saved his life and was there when Sirius was killed, but it would never do to ask him. If he were to come of his own accord, it would be different.”
“It seems a great pity, then, that he can’t know how much he is needed,” said Katherine. “He seems to be the kind of man who always knows exactly what to say, and he is so good-natured he wouldn’t mind coming a bit. ”

“ You are fourteen, aren’t you? I lost a dog that I was very fond of, and if it hadn’t been for my sister I should have been very selfish about it. She showed me how I ought to take it.”
“Oh, it’s easy for girls to talk,” said Peter. “They’ve all been in here this afternoon, telling me I ought to bear it, and make the best of it, and all that. As if I could ever get over losing Sirius, the best dog that ever lived! It is ridiculous for those girls to talk the way they do.”
“My dear fellow,” said Roger Madison, “do you know that you are a very lucky fellow to have those sisters? ”

“ To-day, fortunately for him, Honor’s cold prevented her from being aware of the odor of the barn which accompanied him into the room, and Katherine was too much absorbed in the conversation to remark upon it. Victoria and Sophy did not notice those things.
“Has the ancient war-horse gone?” asked Peter.
“My dear boy, you oughtn’t!” remonstrated Honor; “indeed you shouldn’t call her that.”
“Why not? I am sure she is ancient, and she is a war-horse, for she loves a battle and the sound of prancings. She’s always arguing about something or other. ”

“ You don’t really believe that they eat mice, do you?” said Peter, with lofty scorn. “A lot is made up about the Chinese, because we don’t really know much about them. But they do a large business in mushrooms, or ‘edible fungi,’ as they are called. They import them from Japan and Tahiti, and even from Australia and New Zealand. They make soup out of fungus in China; and do you know in New Zealand they eat a fungus that grows out of the body of a big caterpillar.”
“Oh, horrible!” cried Victoria. “Sophy’s eyes look as big as saucers. Don’t tell any more such dreadful tales, Peter. ”

“ No one would ever have dreamed that the family who were to gather about this table had not all the money they needed.
The eldest sister leaned back in her chair and sighed.
“It is perfectly dreadful,” she exclaimed, “that I don’t know the first thing about cooking! What am I to do? I went into the kitchen determined that that odious B. Lafferty should never suspect that I hadn’t made biscuits every day of my life, but I couldn’t have impressed her that way, for she stood looking at me with the most supercilious expression. ”

“ The soldiers get shot, and the sailors get drownded, and I was thinking of the safest thing he could be, and it was a wheelwright. They just have to mend wagons and carriages; and Peter likes to mend things up in the shop, you know. It is safer than a blacksmith, for a horse might kick a blacksmith, you know, and perhaps kill him.”
Peter roared with laughter, and even Victoria had to raise her hand to her mouth to hide a smile; but she saw that Sophy was very much in earnest, and she would not hurt her feelings for the world. Peter’s laugh, however, was the finishing touch. ”

“ But Carney was too bashful to speak.
It was a happy solution of the difficulty, and Victoria and Sophy hurried back to the house, and had soon packed a basket for the picnic in the barn. Honor’s biscuits, made so early in the afternoon, had risen and fallen again long since, and were now little lumps of hard and sodden dough; but the sisters thought that the boys would doubtless enjoy them, and they bestowed them with a generous hand.
“We can eat crackers ourselves,” said Katherine. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Honor, but—but—do look in the bread-box to-morrow, please!” ”

“ We prefer to stay as we are.”
“Victoria, kindly see if the carriage has come back for me. I told the man to be here without fail,” said Mrs. Wentworth Ward, snapping the lid of her watch as she spoke. “Katherine, help me with my cloak, if you please. Is it dry? Ah, yes, Honor, when you see Dickinson Abbott, you will be made to understand why these arrangements have become necessary. It is easy to talk of living on here, but it requires money to do that—money, and you have scarcely a cent. The carriage has come, Victoria? Very well, then, good-bye! Tell Peter he should have come in to see me. ”

“ Come here, child, and let me kiss you.”
“Or we could have a school,” continued Victoria. “Katherine could teach the music, and I the small children, while you, Honor, would be the principal. It might even be a boarding-school. We have lots of room. Indeed, girls, there are ever so many things we can do if we only put our minds to it. The farming project seems really the best plan, though, for Peter could be of such use there. He loves out-of-door things so much.”
“But about the children’s schooling?” suggested Honor. “If we had a school here, we could teach Sophy.” ”

“ Victoria inclined towards working the farm in some way, in which Peter agreed with her. She pointed out that boarders in summer would perhaps be hard to procure, and also that it would be impossible to go to the mountains or the sea, as Katherine suggested, and leave the place to take care of itself, even if there were no boarders, and even if they had made enough money to warrant such an expense. On the other hand, the working of the farm presented endless possibilities. There was much good sense in what she said, as Honor and Katherine were forced to admit. ”

“ Most of your ideas are good ones, but I really don’t think we ought to starve ourselves.”
“Nor I either,” said Katherine. “I think Honor is right there. Nothing is more horrible than the idea of not having enough food on the table.”
“But I don’t mean that,” persisted Victoria. “I only mean that we don’t need olives and salad and preserves to keep us from being hungry.”
“The preserves don’t cost us a cent but the sugar,” said Honor. ”