thing, educating, and
properly launching the little Johns and Millys who might be expected to
put in an appearance....

But our lovers had not struck the prosaic bottom yet, though they
reached it sooner than either had expected. There were a good many
kisses and verses the first months, passion and temperament. John
discovered, of course, that Mrs. Bragdon was quite a different woman
from Milly Ridge,--a still fascinating, though occasionally
exasperating, creature, while Milly thought John was just what she had
known he would be,--an altogether adorable lover and perfect man. What
surprised her more as the early weeks of marriage slipped by was to find
that she herself had remained, in spite of her great woman's experience,
much the same person she had always been, with the same lively interests
in people and things outside and the same dislike of the sordid side of
existence. She had vaguely supposed that the state of love ecstasy which
had been aroused in her would continue forever, excluding all other
elements in her being, and thus transform her into something gloriously
new. Not at all. She still felt aggrieved when the maid boiled her eggs
more than two minutes or passed the vegetables on the wrong side.

When the two first seriously faced the budget question, they found that
they had started their sentimental partnership with a combined deficit
of over four hundred dollars. Luckily Mrs. Gilbert had sent to their new
address a chilly note of good wishes and a crisp cheque for one hundred
dollars. It was rather brutal of the good lady to put them so quickly on
the missionary list, and Milly wanted to return the cheque; but John
laughed and "entered it to the good," as he said. Then miraculously
Grandma Ridge had put into Milly's hand just before the wedding ten
fresh ten-dollar bills. Where had the old lady concealed such wealth all
these barren years, Milly wondered!... And finally, among other traces
of Eleanor Kemp's fairy hand, they found in a drawer of Milly's new desk
a bank-book on Walter Kemp's bank with a bold entry of $250 on the first
page. So, all told, they were able to start rather to the windward, as
Bragdon put it. Much to Milly's surprise, the artist proved to have a
sense of figures, light handed as he had shown himself before marriage.
At least he knew the difference between the debit and the credit side of
the ledger, and had grasped the fundamental principle of domestic
finance, viz. one can