comfortable balance. "We're not going to
be as poor as I thought we were," he said cheerfully to Anna who had
put in two hectic weeks on the apartment she had chosen because it was
the cheapest in the market. "We've got something in the bank for
emergencies, and ten thousand a year is two hundred a week besides."

Anna was horrified. "You didn't think we'd _spend_ what we make, did
you?"

"Why not? Uncle John didn't say we had to show them ten thousand in
coin at the end of the year; he said I had to _make_ it--on the books.
We can spend every kopeck of it, if we want to. And I was about to say
that with six thousand dollars left over from the mortgage money,
we'll have a maid after all. Yea, verily, even a cook."

Anna glanced at her hands--slim, beautiful hands they were--and shook
her head obstinately. "No, dear. Because what we save now _might_ be
our only capital later."

"But we're going to _win_. We're going to exert our resistless wills
to the utmost. What's the use of being tightwads?"

"But if we _shouldn't_ win, look where we'd be! No, dear, we're going
to save our pennies. That's why I picked out this apartment; that's
why I'm doing as much as I can with it myself. It's the only safe way.
And just look around--haven't I done wonders with almost nothing at
all?"

Henry looked around, not that his memory was at fault, but because he
was perpetually dumbfounded by her genius. Originally, this
living-room had been a dolorous cave with varnished yellow-pine
woodwork, gas-logs, yellow wall-paper to induce toothache, and a stark
chandelier with two anemic legs kicking out at vacancy. She had caused
the Orpheum electrician to remove the chandelier; with her own hands,
she had painted the woodwork a deep, rich cream-colour; she had
ripped out the gas-logs and found what no one had ever suspected--a
practicable flue; and she had put in a basket grate which in the later
season would glow with cheerful coals. Over the wall-paper she had
laid a tint which was a somewhat deeper cream than the woodwork. She
had made that cave attractive with a soft, dull-blue rug, and wicker
furniture, with hangings of cretonne in sunny gold and an echo of the
blue rug, with brass bowls which held the bulbs she had tended on the
kitchen window-sill, with bookshelves, and pictures from her own home.
Especially by candle-light, it was charming; and her greatest joy, and
Henry's unending marvel, was that it had cost so little, and tha