four times, instead of merely double, to be there, too. It was
socially imperative.

"That boosts us up another fifty a week," said Henry appreciatively.
"And we must have a thousand in the bank, haven't we?... Say, Anna,
this bread and cheese racket is all right when you can't afford
anything else, but honestly, won't you just get a cook? I don't care
if she's rotten, but to think of you giving those dishes a sitz-bath
twice a day--"

"Not yet, dear. We aren't _nearly_ out of the woods. Society Night's
helped a lot, but we aren't averaging over two hundred and twenty yet,
are we? That's eighty a week short. So if we don't think up some more
schemes, why, what we're saving now'll have to be our capital _next_
year."

"But when a man has this much income--"

"Yes, and you owe ten thousand on a mortgage, and the tax bills
haven't come in yet, and you'll have an income tax to pay.... We'll
save awhile longer."

It was greater heroism than he realized, for she had never lost, for a
single instant, her abhorrence of the kitchen; nor was she willing to
cater to her prejudice, and work with only the tips of her fingers.
She had two principal defences--she wore rubber gloves, and she
sang--but whenever she had to put her hands into greasy water,
whenever she scrubbed a kettle, whenever she cleaned the sink, a
series of cold chills played up and down her spine as fitfully as a
flame plays on the surface of alcohol. She detested every item which
had to do with that kitchen; and yet, to save Henry the price of a
cook--now seventy dollars a month--she sacrificed her squeamishness.
There were nights when she simply couldn't eat--she couldn't draw a
cloud over her imagination, and forget what the steak had looked like,
and felt like, uncooked. There were six days in seven when the mere
sight of blackened pots and pans put her nerves on edge. But she
always remembered that Henry was supposed to be irresponsible, and
that a penny in hand is worth two in prospect; so that she sang away,
and tried to dispel her thoughts of the kitchen by thinking about the
Orpheum.

It was in early December that she conceived the Bargain Matinee,
which wasn't the ordinary cut-price performance, but the adaptation of
an old trick of the department stores. The Tuesday and Friday
matinees were the poorest attended, so that Anna suggested--and
Henry ordered--that beginning at half past four on Tuesdays and
Fridays, the fifty-cent seats were reduced