Far Horizons by Kate Hewitt

in dismay. "Your father won't stand for that, Miss Campbell. This farm's been in your family for fifty years or more, and naught changed in all that time."
    "Times have changed," Harriet replied, a trifle sharply. "Three years of bad harvests and dropping prices mean everyone has to do without. If Father were well, if we'd some savings put by..." Harriet shook her head despairingly. "Ted, honestly, what else can we do?"
    "There's always the sheep," Ted reminded her. "The price of wool is still steady, and there'll be new lambs this spring as well."
    "Yes, but it won't be enough." Harriet knew they fetched a good price for their clip, but they'd always been primarily crop farmers, and the wool was used for the family, with a bit left to sell. They could hardly pin all their hopes on that.
    "It'll grieve your father mightily to sell," Ted said mournfully.
    "Well, then he shouldn't have got us in this moger ," Harriet retorted. As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. "Never mind what I said, Ted. I'm only tired."
    "I know, Miss Campbell. Anna and I think you're a brave lass, if you want to know the truth. I don't ken how you put up with it all."
    Neither do I, Harriet wanted to say, but she just smiled instead. "Thank you."
    Later that evening, sitting by the fire, a piece of mending lying forgotten in her lap, Harriet's somber thoughts returned to circle uselessly in her mind. There seemed to be no solution but to sell the land, yet even that would only be temporary. If next year's harvest turned out poorly again, they would be as worse off as ever. They might sell another field, but the more land they sold, the less profit they could hope to make. It seemed a hopeless situation.
    Eleanor suddenly stood in front of Harriet, a solemn look on her face. With her fingers she gently stroked her older sister's forehead.
    "What are you doing, Ellie?" Harriet asked, bemused.
    "Don't worry, Harriet, please. I can tell you're worrying because you get that wrinkle in the middle of your forehead, like a dimple."
    "Do I?" Harriet briefly touched her brow. "Gives me away, then, doesn't it? I'm sorry. I don't mean to trouble you with my worries."
    "But you should," Eleanor protested seriously. "That's what we're here for.”
    “She speaks true,” Margaret said quietly, looking up from her game of chess with Rupert. “If we all pull together, perhaps we can think of a solution.”
    Eleanor sat on the stool by Harriet’s knee. “It's money, isn't it? That we need, I mean."
    Harriet put down her stitching with a sigh. "Yes, it is."
    "Why didn't Father tell us things were going badly?" Ian said suddenly, his voice full of frustrated anger. He gazed moodily into the fire. "It's as if he tricked us, all this while."
    "Hush yourself, Ian Campbell," Harriet said sternly. "He was trying to keep us well out of it, and who knows what might've happened if the harvest had been better?" She closed her eyes briefly, the distressing numbers in the accounts book dancing through her mind. "As it is..."
    "I wish we could forget it all," Ian said, sounding much younger than his fifteen years. "Who do we owe money to? They should forget it. If everyone's had a bad harvest, it's hardly fair."
    "We owe money to just about everyone," Harriet said with a sigh. "Everything's been bought on credit. And I don't think it'll be forgotten, not in these hard times. As for us forgetting it..." she smiled whimsically and quoted, " Ní dhíolann dearmhad fiacha ... forgetting a debt does not pay it."
    "If only it did!" Eleanor said with a wistful sigh. "We wouldn't need money then, just faulty memories."
    “Surely we could do something,” Margaret interjected quietly. “I could write Father...”
    “My father won’t take charity, and neither will I,” Harriet replied firmly.
    “Harriet, we’re as near as family...”
    Harriet just shook her head. Never mind that David would refuse all such offers, she knew it would only be a temporary solution and a bad