“I paid for it,” she replied. “That is what I wanted the ready money for. I saw it in the window of a typewriter place as I was on my way to the furniture store. I knew I should have to pay ‘cash down’ for it, as they didn’t know me there, while they did at the furniture place. I hope you think I did right, girls. I hope you agree with me.” “I think,” said Honor, turning slowly and looking at her sister,—“I think you are the most foolish and the most extravagant person I ever saw or heard of. The idea of your spending forty dollars on a typewriter, when we are so poor we can scarcely buy our food, and it was just as much as we could do to scrape the forty dollars together for you to take to Boston to buy the schoolroom furniture with. Oh, that we had never let you go! Can the thing be taken back?” “No,” said Katherine, shortly. “Why not?” “Why of course it can’t, Honor, unless in exchange for another typewriter! Of course the man isn’t going to give me back the money. How foolish you are!” “Foolishness must run in the family,” said Honor. “I think Aunt Sophia was quite right when she said we were nothing but children and not fit to take care of ourselves. If you go on in this way, we shall soon have to take refuge in Beacon Street, after all. I think you might at least have consulted us before you bought it. I suppose you were afraid to. That is the reason you were so anxious to go yourself to buy the desks. You had made up your mind before you went, to get this thing.” “I hadn’t at all, Honor,” cried Katherine, stung by this accusation. “I hadn’t the least idea of doing it until I saw them in the window. If I had happened to go through any other street, I should never have dreamed of getting it. It was evidently intended that we should own a typewriter, for I was led right up to the window.” “An easy sort of philosophy,” remarked Honor. “Oh well,” interposed Victoria, “it is done, so there is no use in lamenting. We may as well make the best of it, though the next time you go to Boston, Katherine, I think Honor and I had better be on each side of you to keep you from being ‘led up’ to windows. If you had been ‘led’ to Toppan’s window, would you have bought all that you saw there? Or to Shreve’s, or Bigelow’s? Oh, Katherine!” And then Victoria, who had been undecided for some time as to whether she should laugh or cry, began to laugh. “I think it is too funny!” she exclaimed. “I feel as if we had a white elephant in the house. In addition to everything else that we have to do we have all got to learn typewriting, so as to make it pay! Oh, Katherine, Katherine!”