ook a couple of deep breaths. "Makes the city look like
thirty cents!" he ejaculated. "Of course it isn't like New York or
Southampton."

"No, thank God! It isn't!" I muttered as we wandered toward the house.

"I hope you don't mind an early supper," apologized Mrs. Hastings as we
entered; "but Jim gets absolutely ravenous. You see, on weekdays his
lunch is at best a movable feast."

Our promptly served meal consisted of soup, scrambled eggs and bacon,
broiled chops, fried potatoes, peas, salad, apple pie, cheese, grapes
plucked fresh from the garden wall, and black coffee, distilled from a
shining coffee machine. Mrs. Hastings brought the things hot from the
kitchen and dished them herself. Tom and Sylvia, carefully spruced up,
ate prodigiously and then helped clear away the dishes, while I produced
my cigar case.

Then Hastings led me across the hall to a room about twelve feet square,
the walls of which were lined with books, where a wood fire was already
crackling cozily. Motioning me to an old leather armchair, he pulled up
a wooden rocker before the mantel and, leaning over, laid a regiment of
chestnuts before the blazing logs.

I stretched out my legs and took a long pull on one of my
Carona-Caronas. It all seemed too good to be true. Only six hours before
in my marble entrance hall I had listened disgustedly to the cackle of
my wife's luncheon party behind the tapestry of my own dining room.

After all, how easy it was to be happy! Here was Hastings, jolly as a
clam and living like a prince on--what? I wondered.

"Hastings," I said, "do you mind telling me how much it costs you to
live like this?"

"Not at all," he replied--"though I never figured it out exactly. Let's
see. Five per cent on the cost of the place--say, two hundred dollars.
Repairs and insurance a hundred. That's three hundred, isn't it? We pay
the hired man thirty-five dollars and Carmen eighteen dollars a month,
and give 'em their board--about six hundred and fifty more. So far nine
hundred and fifty. Our vegetables and milk cost us practically
nothing--meat and groceries about seventy-five a month--nine hundred a
year.

"We have one horse; but in good weather I use my bicycle to go to the
station. We cut our own ice in the pond back of the orchard. The schools
are free. I cut quite a lot of wood myself, but my coal comes high--must
cost me at least a hundred and fifty a year. I don't have many doctors'
bills, living out here; but the