They were
all asking me, down there, how I liked my honeymoon, and where we went
and what we saw. A lot of them began talking of the time they'd had.
They all said it never lasts. People are fools, aren't they?"

"Not to make it last?" said Marie. "Yes, dear."

"The attitude of the average man towards married life is sickening,"
said Osborn, "but I'm glad to think _you'll_ never know anything
about that, little girl."

Marie had a great feeling, as she looked under the candle-shades, at
Osborn, that she had found the king of men: lover, protector and
knight.

"The attitude of the average woman towards married life is perfectly
mean, Osborn. But _you'll_ never know anything about that,
either."

He knew, as he returned her look across the flowers, that he alone had
achieved every man's desire; he had found the perfect mate; she who
would never soil, nor age, nor weep, nor wound; the jewel-girl.

CHAPTER V

HOUSEKEEPING

Marie had not thought of money in relation to herself and Osborn. He
was known, in the set among which they both moved, and had met and
loved and married, as a promising young fellow doing very well indeed,
in a steady fashion, for his age. He had a salary, when they set up
housekeeping in No. 30, of two hundred a year, with a very good rise
indeed, a 25 per cent, rise, at the end of every five years. And he
earned this and that now and again in odd channels, vaguely dubbed
commission, or expenses. So, as a bachelor, Osborn could be almost
splendid in their set, and as a husband he was resolved to be
conscientious and careful. He had decided to give up his inexpensive
club, and presently he meant to go into the matter of conscience and
care, to give it a figure, but not so soon after the honeymoon as
Marie drew him into it. It was all very comfortable saying to oneself:
"I must make some arrangement; all in good time," but the making of it
left one a little cold, a little surprised, inclined to thought.

When the Kerrs had been housekeeping for a week, the butcher and baker
and the rest of the clan each dropped through the letter-slit in the
front door of No. 30 a very clean, spruce, new book, and the young
wife gathered them up with eager trepidation. She had been washing up,
when the books arrived, all the dinner things left over from the night
before, and the breakfast things of this morning, and from the kitchen
she heard and recognised the blunt thump as each record of her
housek