e up," said
Norman. "I'll attend to it--that is, I'll have it attended to." Seeing
her uneasy expression, he added: "I can get much better terms. They'd
certainly overcharge you. There's no sense in wasting money--is there?"

"No," she admitted, convinced.

He gave the order to a firm of decorators. It was a moderate order,
considering the amount of work that had to be done. But if the girl had
seen the estimates Norman indorsed, she would have been terrified.
However, he saw to it that she did not see them; and she, ignorant of
values, believed him when he told her the general account of the
corporation must be charged with two thousand dollars.

Her alarm took him by surprise. The sum seemed small to him--and it was
only about one fifth what the alterations and improvements had cost.
Cried she, "Why, that's more than our whole income for a year has been!"

"You are forgetting these improvements add to the value of the property.
I've bought it."

That quieted her. "You are sure you didn't pay those decorators and
furnishers too much?" said she.

"You don't like their work?" inquired he, chagrined.

"Oh, yes--yes, indeed," she assured him. "I like plain, solid-looking
things. But--two thousand dollars is a lot of money."

Norman regretted that, as his whole object had been to please her, he
had not ordered the more showy cheaper stuff but had insisted upon the
simplest, plainest-looking appointments throughout. Even her bedroom
furniture, even her dressing table set, was of the kind that suggests
cost only to the experienced, carefully and well educated in values and
in taste.

"But I'm sure it isn't fair to charge _all_ these things to the company,"
she protested. "I can't allow it. Not the things for my personal use."

"You _are_ a fierce watchdog of a treasurer," said Norman, laughing at her
but noting and respecting the fine instinct of good breeding shown in
her absence of greediness, of desire to get all she could. "But I'm
letting the firm of decorators take over what you leave behind in the
old house. I'll see what they'll allow for it. Maybe that will cover the
expense you object to."

This contented her. Nor was she in the least suspicious when he
announced that the decorators had made such a liberal allowance that the
deficit was but three hundred dollars. "Those chaps," he explained,
"have a wide margin of profit. Besides, they're eager to get more and
bigger work from me."

A few weeks, and h