The Challengers by Grace Livingston Hill

ought to try it. Come on, Liss. Get your pencil and begin work. There's that old chair; write that down first."
    "Nobody would buy that!" scorned Melissa.
    "You can't tell what folks would buy till you try them. I'm going out to get a secondhand man to come and give us his price. We'll put in everything we could actually do without and see what it amounts to. There's one thing certain: what we sell we don't have to move, anyway, and outside of that cuckoo clock there isn't one thing in this room that I personally would weep for if it were gone. How about it? There's the sewing machine for the second item."
    "It's old and junky. Everybody has electric machines now."
    "Not everybody. There's an old woman down that alley over there that hasn't got one. I shouldn't wonder if she'd give at least fifty cents for this one."
    "Oh, fifty cents! What's that?" said Melissa contemptuously.
    "It's something," said Phyllis. "Two of them make a whole dollar, you know. Come, get to work."
    "But what would you sew with if it were gone?" queried Melissa thoughtfully.
    "We still have a needle or two left," said Phyllis.
    Mrs. Challenger lingered around a minute or two watching them, and then she slipped shyly into her bedroom and shut the door. Later they thought they heard sounds of sobs, but half an hour later when she came out she wore a more peaceful look on her face and smiled at them.
    "I'm going out now, dears," she said, trying to make her voice sound cheerful. "I'll try to be back by lunchtime. But if I'm not, don't go without eating again. There's bacon enough, isn't there?"
    "Yes, lots of bacon yet," said Phyllis, "and a whole loaf of bread not touched. We'll lunch luxuriously. But don't you dare go without any lunch yourself. Here, I'll make a sandwich for you to take along in your bag. We still have half a roll of wax paper left, thank fortune. Yes, you've got to take it. Look how you came home last night, all in! Now, you'll be good and eat it, won't you, Mother dear?"
    "But where are you going?" asked Melissa, with troubled eyes. "You aren't going to the hospital again, are you?"
    "No, they wanted Father to have absolute quiet today after his examination yesterday. They promised him if he did just as he was told that he could come out and come 'home,' they called it, in a week or ten days now. Just think if he has to come to Slacker Street! It would set him all back again. He hasn't an idea what kind of place we are living in."
    "Well, we're leaving here today," said Phyllis with determination. "Mother, have we your permission to sell some of this junk? And do you mind if we go out and find a room for tonight, even if it is only one room?"
    "Sell whatever you think we can get along without," said the mother indifferently, "and find a room if you can. We can crowd in anywhere for a while till we can look around."
    "I don't like the look in Mother's eyes," said Melissa after the mother was gone. "I believe she's gone to pawn her wedding ring."
    "I'm afraid she has," said Phyllis, looking out of the window after her mother's slender figure.
    "Well, we've got to do something, that's all," said Melissa. "Will you go out for that secondhand man or shall I?"
    "You go," said Phyllis. "I'll stay here and get the things we want to sell all together so things won't get mixed up. You don't think we need this rug, do you? It isn't a very grand one, nor very large, but it's Oriental, or was once, and it ought to bring a little something. Go to that place on the corner of Tenth Street. They seem to be a little more respectable than the others."
But Mrs. Challenger had not gone to pawn her wedding ring yet. She was hurrying breathlessly down the street toward the main avenue and the business part of the town and gripping more closely in her hand the letter that had come to her that morning.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Stephen Challenger sat on the edge of his iron bedstead in the top floor of his college dormitory, carefully darning a hole in his trousers. He