"Oh, yes," said Edith dryly, "you have been very liberal and prompt with everything, especially your bill." At this Mr. Hard's eyes grew quite pebbly, and he muttered something about its being the rule to settle monthly. "Oh, certainly," said Edith, "and like most rules, no doubt, has many exceptions. Good-morning." She also paid something on the other bills, and found that she had but a few dollars left. Though there was a certain sense of relief in the feeling that she now owed much less, still she looked with dismay on the small sum remaining. Where was more to come from? She had determined that she would not go to New York again to sell anything except in the direst extremity. That evening Hannibal gave them a meagre supper, for Edith had told him of the absolute necessity of economy. There was a little grumbling over the fare. So Edith pushed her chair back, laid seven dollars on the table, saying: "That's all the money I have in the world. Who's got any more?" They raised ten dollars among them. "Now," said Edith, "this is all we have. Where is more coming from?" Helpless sighs and silence were her only answers. "There is nothing clearer in the world," continued Edith, "than that we must earn money. What can we do?" "I never thought I should have to work," said Laura piteously. "But, my dear sister," said Edith earnestly, "isn't it clear to you now that you must? You certainly don't expect me to earn enough to support you all. One pair of hands can't do it, and it wouldn't be fair in the bargain." "Oh, certainly not," said Laura. "I will do anything you say as well as I can, though, for the life of me, I don't see what I can do." "Nor I either," said Zell passionately. "I don't know how to work. I never did anything useful in my life that I know of. What right have parents to bring up girls in this way, unless they make it a perfect certainty that they will always be rich? Here we are as helpless as four children. We have not got enough to keep us from starving more than a week at best. Just to think of it! Men are speculating and risking all they have every day. Ever since I was a child I have heard about the risks of business. I knew some people whose fathers failed, and they went away, I don't know where, to suffer as we have perhaps, and yet girls are not taught to do a single thing by which they can earn a penny if they need to. If anybody will pay me for jabbering a little bad French and Italian, and strumming a few operatic airs on the piano, I am at their service. I think I also understand dressing, flirting, and receiving compliments very well. I had a taste for these things, and never had any special motive given me for doing anything else. What becomes of all the girls thus taught to be helpless, and then tossed out into the world to sink or swim?" "They find some self-sustaining work in it," said Edith. "Not all of them, I guess," muttered Zell sullenly.