“What is it?” asked Honor and Katherine together. They had a great respect for Victoria’s “ideas.” “Why shouldn’t we all do something to support ourselves? Lots of girls do.” “Of course they do!” cried Katherine. “Vic, you’re a girl after my own heart. _You’re_ not going to sit quietly down on Beacon Street and be ordered about by Aunt Sophia!” This with a glance at Honor, who was too much interested in Victoria’s proposition, however, to notice it. “Do you really think we could?” she asked. “What could we do? Katherine has her music, I know, but there is no particular talent that I have, and you haven’t finished school, and there are Peter and Sophy. They couldn’t do anything. And I suppose we should have to leave the place just the same.” “That is just what I am coming to,” replied Victoria. “It popped into my head before Mr. Abbott went, and I have been thinking about it ever since, and Peter could help a lot if we carry it out, and Sophy too. Why can’t we stay on here, and turn the place to some account?” “Child, what do you mean?” cried Honor; and even Peter, who had been sitting moodily by a distant table, taking no apparent interest in the conversation, but absorbed in his own gloomy reflections, dropped the paper-cutter which he had been handling and drew nearer. “What do you mean, Vic?” he asked; “and what can I do to help? It has been bothering me that I can’t do anything as long as I am the only boy in the family.” Victoria looked at him lovingly. She wished that she might venture to give him a hug for that speech, but she knew that Peter would not like it, so she refrained. “I mean,” said she, “that we might live on here and make the place pay. We could sell the farm produce, sell the milk—you know we have all those cows. Surely we can’t use all the milk and cream they must give, and there must be horrible waste. Then we could raise other things. I have a thousand ideas. Or hens! We might keep hens and sell the eggs. Or violets! Or mushrooms! I heard of some one not long ago who made a fortune and went abroad on mushrooms and violets.” Victoria’s voice rose with her rapidly increasing enthusiasm. She could see that she had made a point. Her sisters were distinctly impressed. “And we shouldn’t have to give up the place, after all!” cried Honor. “Victoria, you are brilliant! 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.”