Page:Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903).djvu/261

Rh "Now, aunt Miranda," she said cheerily, "I expect you to smack your lips and say this is good; it 's not Randall, but Sawyer milk toast."

"You 've tried all kinds on me, one time an' another," Miranda answered. "This tastes real kind o' good; but I wish you had n't wasted that nice geranium."

"You can't tell what's wasted," said Rebecca philosophically; "perhaps that geranium has been hoping this long time it could brighten somebody's supper, so don't disappoint it by making believe you don't like it. I 've seen geraniums cry,—in the very early morning!"

The mysterious trouble to which Jane had alluded was a very real one, but it was held in profound secrecy. Twenty-five hundred dollars of the small Sawyer property had been invested in the business of a friend of their father's, and had returned them a regular annual income of a hundred dollars. The family friend had been dead for some five years, but his son had succeeded to his interests and all went on as formerly. Suddenly there came a letter saying that the firm had gone into bankruptcy, that the business had been completely wrecked, and that the Sawyer money had been swept away with everything else.

The loss of one hundred dollars a year is a very trifling matter, but it made all the difference between comfort and self-denial to the two old spinsters.