ogether, ripping up some breadths of faded cloth that they
were going to send to the dye-house. Ray was in the front room,
looking over papers. Mrs. Ingraham's name appeared in the notices,
but Ray really did the work, all except the signing of the necessary
documents.

Everything was very different here, the moment Joseph Ingraham's
breath was gone from his body. Everything that had stood in his name
stood now in the name of an "estate." Large or small, an estate has
always to be settled. There had been a man already applying to buy
out the remainder of the bakery lease,--house and all. He was ready
to take it for eight years, including the one it had yet to run in
the present occupancy; he would pay them a considerable bonus for
relinquishing this and the goodwill.

Ray had stood at the helm and brought the vessel to port; that was
different from undertaking another voyage. She did not see that she
had any right to hazard her mother's and sister's little means, and
incur further risks which she had not actual capital to meet, for
the ambition, or even possible gain, of carrying on a business. She
understood it perfectly; she could have done it; she could, perhaps,
have worked out some of her own new ideas; if she and Dot had been
brothers, instead of sisters, it would very likely have been what
they would have done. There was enough to pay all debts and leave
them upwards of a thousand dollars apiece. But Ray sat down and
thought it all over. She remembered that they _were_ women, and she
saw how that made all the difference.

"Suppose either of us should wish to marry? Dot might, at any rate."

That was the way she said it to herself. She really thought of Dot
especially and first; for it would be her doing if her sister were
bound and hampered in any way; and even though Dot were willing,
could she see clear to decide upon an undertaking that would involve
the seven best years of the child's life, in which "who knew what
might happen?"

She did not look straight in the face her own possibilities, yet she
said simply in her own mind, "A woman ought to leave room for that.
It might be cheating some one else, as well as herself, if she
didn't." And she saw very well that a woman could not marry and
assume family ties, with a seven years' lease of a bakehouse and a
seven years' business on her hands. "Why--he might be a--anything,"
was the odd little wording with which she mentally exclaimed at this
point of her